Janovay
by Roseveare
Summary: MA-style. In which the Doctor refuses to save the world, Nyssa isn't turned into a monster or taken over by an alien intelligence, and Tegan is in several places at once. COMPLETE.
1. Time Out of Mind

TITLE: Janovay  
AUTHOR: Roseveare, t.l.green@talk21.com  
RATING: PG-13/nothing worse than the televised episodes.  
SUMMARY: MA-style. In which the Doctor refuses to save the world, Nyssa isn't turned into a monster or taken over by an alien intelligence, and Tegan is in several places at once. Part 1 of 4.  
TIMELINE: Between 'Arc of Infinity' and 'Snakedance'. Obliquely references BBC Eighth Doctor books, namely 'Alien Bodies'. Only somewhat tenuously fitting canon post 'The Ancestor Cell'.  
NOTES: The majority of this was written back in university. A couple of years ago, it got tidied up and a book proposal sent to the BBC Past Doctors range. Consequently rejected, but finally finding its way to the net as I get around to a last few bits of editing.  
DISCLAIMER: All Doctor Who characters and concepts belong to the BBC. The ones you don't recognise are mine. Especially Verani. No profit, just borrowing, yadda, yadda, yadda. 

* * *

**Doctor Who: Janovay **

_Prologue_

Marea Drex shivered inside her thermal suit. The dying sun high overhead provided little warmth to the excavation site, and in the thin atmosphere no longer capable of supporting most oxygen-breathing species, no vegetation grew on land little more than cold, wind-torn plains of dust. Although once civilisations had flourished here, it was now a desert barren of all but the most simple and hardy of native life. A world in its death throes, orbiting a dying star slowly burning its way towards extinction in the footsteps of a binary companion reduced to ashes millennia ago. 

Her research team were working as speedily as they could, reluctant to damage findings due to haste, but aware that time was short, so they worked against time to unearth a last few alien artefacts. Before funding ran out, before the expedition was pulled, before conditions degenerated so much it became impossible to work at all. The team members already had to wear thermal suits, with gloves and face masks and bulky breathing apparatus, making an ordinarily difficult and delicate task close to impossible. 

Most of the archaeologists were Krian, and although there were members of other Alliance races on the team, they tended to keep to themselves and to bite or worse if disturbed, so the Krians had developed the habit of respecting their personal space. Marea was the only one of the expedition not currently huddled inside their space vessel trying to thaw out fingers, toes, and other bodily appendages. 

She swore inside her oxygen mask as she worked, wondering if the temperature regulator in her suit was broken. Her toes were freezing but she thought she could feel her fingers starting to burn. The lure of a good intellectual mystery was fighting a losing battle against the temptation to head back to the ship and curl up in the warm with a cup of something hot and preferably intoxicating. 

As she worked she reviewed their findings so far in her mind. From the orbital scan, the only signs of civilisation ever existing on the planet were located in a single spot; a sizeable city near the equator. From this it was clear the former inhabitants were a colony rather than a species evolved on the planet itself. The evidence of the city now remaining comprised of some rather scrambled foundations and indications of a large underground system of some sort which had been mashed almost beyond recognition by minor seismic activity giving it a good stir around in the many, many years it had been buried there. 

It was so much of a mess their instruments were having trouble scanning a current picture, let alone piecing together a reconstruction of its original shape. There was a lot of metal down there in concentrations pure enough to suggest a manufactured origin but with no clear artificial forms. Her theories ran to this being the remnant of alien technology which had suffered from the stresses of heat and pressure within the ground somewhere in the planet's turbulent past. 

Marea continued her slow progress around her taped-off ten metre square, making sure she ran the scanner over every millimetre of ground, collecting the data of everything contained within it to a depth of up to fifty metres. Ancient star charts and references from other alien cultures had suggested a name for the planet, a name that would appear beside her name in academic writings for centuries to come if circumstances allowed the completion of her research. It wasn't every archaeologist who had opportunity to excavate the site of an ancient alien civilisation. 

She shivered and glanced back to the ship, thinking again about joining the others for a break. But she knew if she quit now nothing would persuade her to leave the comfort of the ship again that day. She returned to her work. 

She sensed rather than heard or saw she was not alone. In the thermal suit, hearing and vision were limited. She looked up to see a stranger walking across the dead, dust landscape towards her. 

He wore neither oxygen mask or thermal suit, but didn't seem concerned about the absence of these items. He looked Krian, but Marea couldn't think of a krianoid species capable of survival unprotected in the planet's hostile conditions. 

As he walked closer, she took in further details. The stranger was a fairly elegant, pleasant-faced youngish male. He was wearing strange and wildly inappropriate clothing, consisting of red and white striped trousers, a white jersey with a splash of colour dashed around the collar, and a long, beige-coloured jacket. The jacket appeared to have some kind of green vegetation attached to it near the collar. This shrubbery was not faring as well as its wearer in the cold, thin atmosphere. 

The stranger was also wearing a hat, which he held on his head with one hand. In his other hand he carried a small oxygen cylinder, from which he took a breath before politely removing his hat and tucking it under his elbow to hold out a hand in greeting. "Hello," he said cheerfully, shouting so she could hear him inside her thermal suit. "It's a bit chilly out here!" 

Marea stared at him blankly. He grinned back at her, and waggled the fingers of his extended hand. Courtesy demanded she take it, and she managed to return the greeting in a somewhat garbled voice. She realised she had to shout to be heard through her face-mask, and repeated herself louder. 

"Am I right in thinking you are the famed archaeologist Marea Drex?" he enquired as though he'd walked up to her at a dinner party. 

Famed? Well, she wasn't about to contradict him. "I-I'm Marea Drex, yes." 

His grin widened. "I came here to see you!" 

Now that her wits were returning to her, some pressing questions about the legality of the stranger's presence on the planet came to mind. She recovered enough to question, as she ought, his being there. "Are you aware this is a private expedition in a restricted zone of space? The only people permitted to be on this planet are the members of my team." 

"Yes, yes," he said, as if he considered himself exempt from such technicalities, although he did start to look uncomfortable as he took another breath of oxygen and continued. "I need to speak to you about a matter of some importance." He rubbed the back of his neck in an embarrassed gesture, absently put his hat back on his head then had to snatch for it as it immediately blew off, and he generally looked as though he'd like to be somewhere else. Then he grinned charmingly again, and said, apologetically, "My explanation may take some time. It might be better to retire to your ship and discuss it in the warm?" 

Marea shook her head firmly. If it was important - and there was a seriousness and sincerity to this strange individual which inclined her to think it was - then she wanted to hear it first alone, unaccompanied by arguments and squabbling from the rest of her diverse team. "Go ahead!" she said. 

* * *

**

_Part 1. Time out of Mind_

**

Chapter 1 

He didn't know where he was. For a long moment after his arrival he didn't even know who he was. But then his head cleared, a little, and he remembered he was Ryn Luthen, and realised he was not dead but lying on his back on a damp, lumpy surface with moisture soaking through the back of his clothes to rest cold and clammy against his skin. 

He knew he shouldn't be there. Because he shouldn't be anywhere; shouldn't be alive. 

He could still hear Sergeant Dunae's warning shout reverberating inside his head. Seconds too late, as one of the enemy whose ship they'd boarded fired and the force of the glancing shot knocked him backwards through the failing force-shield into the interstellar drive's open, damaged core. At that moment he had known he was a dead man. 

Yet he could feel the sunlight on his face, hear the sounds of birds. When he opened his eyes he saw he was surrounded by an open, grassy landscape. The grass was, admittedly, slightly blue, but it was a welcome sight to someone who had never expected to see anything again. He doubted he was in the afterlife. If there was one, it certainly shouldn't be so damp. He tried to sit up, to stand, to get out of the soggy, muddy grass. 

Only to discover limbs that should be working weren't. Whatever had happened to him, it had shorted out the mechanisms in his cybernetic arm and leg. He swore, then looked around nervously at the lapse, but merely reaffirmed the fact that the landscape was deserted, discounting the odd clump of scruffy trees. 

One such straggling knot, crouched just below the crest of a small, shallow hill some two hundred metres across the grasslands, promised some modicum of cover. The decision to reach it, from his broken-bodied, sprawled position, was easier made than actualised. Every movement dragging the weight of unresponsive cybertechnology required so much effort as to seem almost an impossibility. Luthen let his training take over, shifting his body across the ground in an awkward, shuffling crawl. By the time he finally rolled under the dubious cover of the trees, his breathing was a series of quick, ragged gasps and the muscles that still existed in his arms and legs were afire. 

For several minutes he lay there, looking up through the latticework of branches to the sky with its two suns, his body recovering and his mind trying to break through an overlay of fuzz to assess the situation logically. 

One of the suns was high and one was setting. He frowned, aware that he was failing to make some obvious connection. There weren't many habitable planets in binary star systems. Only two in the entire Union, that he could think of. Neither, as far as he knew, had blue vegetation. 

The cobwebs in his mind smothered his train of thought, and he made an effort to concentrate on more immediate concerns. Such as the minor problem of every cybernetic element of his body deciding to quit during transit. 

With gritted teeth and a force of will Luthen hadn't expected to find, he managed to haul himself up into a sitting position against the slim trunk of a tree. The tree was none too sturdy and it shook as he leaned his weight against it. He imagined hordes of hungry barbarians on the other side of the hill spotting the shaking treetop and charging to the attack, and he hoped the landscape would stay empty until he had chance to repair his systems and attempt to figure out what had happened. 

Luthen turned his attention to the access panel above his left knee, prying off the metal cover to study the controls inside. He'd been taught, of course, advanced maintenance and repair functions, but hadn't had cause to put those lessons into practice in the field before. He just hoped he could get everything in working order again. The thought of being trapped on an unknown planet, alone and crippled, was terrifying. 

What kind of freak energies at work in the drive core could have caused such an apparent impossibility to occur, that he should be transported instead of disintegrated? Maybe he was injured, and dreaming, and the whole sequence of events nothing more than a hallucination. His mind grasped at the idea, but his situation felt too real for it to convince. 

He fiddled with the failsafe mechanism in his leg. Emergency shutdown, he realised. There had been too much energy in whatever process had transported him, and failsafe mechanisms had closed down the power in his cybernetic limbs before he could be killed by the artificial parts of himself exploding. He grit his teeth as he made the final adjustment to the controls and brought the cybernetic leg back on line. Difficult to affact repairs without the full command of all his nerves and muscles. 

One moment he was bending the leg slowly to test the mechanisms, the next he'd become aware of someone approaching, whether by some small sound or some other sense he wasn't sure. He slid the gun from his belt. Checking the power with quick and quiet efficiency, he gripped it firmly in his right hand, the hand that worked, and crawled on elbows and knees the last few feet up the crest of the hill, just far enough that he could peer over the top and see down the other side. 

Two things stood out among the grasslands. The city he saw instantly, a distant shimmering array of white and towers amid the blue-green of the landscape. It gripped the attention so forcefully he almost missed the small humanoid figure, about half the city's distance away and running towards him at speed. 

As the figure came closer, he saw it was a woman. Young, small, dark-haired. She was wearing a green outfit that had once been very fine but was now muddied and scuffed. An expression of frustrated terror and panic distorted her face. She was running awkwardly, because she was wearing shoes heeled with spikes. 

Luthen edged to his right and stood up behind the cover of a tree trunk, holding the gun ready. By the time she reached him she was losing speed. When he stepped out of cover she was within metres of him and, mouth agape, she stared at him, stared at the gun, and slid down onto her backside on the ground, where she sat and stared at him some more. He felt ridiculous pointing a gun at a peculiar, unarmed woman, so he lowered the weapon. 

"Are you real?" she said, and her voice had the strangest inflection he had ever heard. She glanced behind her fearfully, and relief crept over her face. "It's gone." She squinted at him. "You couldn't see it, could you? Then it was all in my head." She appeared to notice for the first time that she was sitting in the mud, and held a hand out expectantly. He had to holster the gun to free his right arm to help her up. 

Somehow, the next thing he knew she had the gun in her own hands and was backing away from him. Her hands were shaking, and he was more afraid she would shoot him by accident than design. Her voice held raw desperation as she half shouted, "Who are you? You're not one of them, you're something else. Who are you? What are you? Tell me!" 

"My name's Ryn Luthen. Where is this place?" He tried to hold up both empty hands in surrender but the left one still wasn't working. He was a fool to have underestimated her, just like all the others said. Stupid. Stupid and careless. 

"You mean you don't know where you are?" she demanded with disbelief, then realised he had evaded the second part of her question. "Where did you come from?" 

"The last thing I knew I was on a starship inside the borders of the Karalian Union," he said, knowing it sounded lame. "I don't know how I got here. I don't even know where here is." 

The strange woman laughed, and went on laughing, her eyes taking in the cybernetic nature of his left arm and leg. "I don't believe this. You're one of the enemy. You're the reason we're stuck in this mess in the first place." Abruptly she stopped laughing and leaned forward and slapped him across the face. "Bastards! If it wasn't for your lot the Janovians wouldn't be in danger and neither would we!" 

Luthen reeled back with the impact of her open palm and her words. He was on Janovay. The next target of the Karalian Union. Janovay with its dual suns and a store of technology buried beneath the planet's surface that just might hold the answer to save all their lives, save future generations of Karalians the suffering the present ones had to live with. 

To his surprise the woman threw down the gun, which hit the wet grass with a slapping sound, and slid down again herself, her back leaned against a tree. "What do I care?" she muttered. "I'm dead anyway. Fading away." She held out her hands in demonstration and with shock Luthen realised he could see straight through them if he looked hard, pick out individual blades on the grasslands floor beyond. 

He knelt down in front of her, too horrified to pick up the gun again. The woman wasn't any danger to him. He touched one of her hands. It felt solid enough. She whipped both back out of his reach and folded her arms across her chest. 

"What's happening to you?" he asked. 

She glared as though he was personally responsible, and rapped, "None of your business, tin man!" She buried her head in her hands, and muffled a sob. "Oh, rabbits. I'm dead, the Doctor's dying, and Nyssa's going to be trapped here when your people invade." She raised her tearstained face to glare at him again. "I should have bloody well shot you. At least it would have made me feel better." 

Luthen held up his hand with the reclaimed gun, but she batted it aside as if it was an insignificant irritance. He wondered if it was actually possible to shoot her in her present not-quite-material state, or whether the bullet would go straight through without damage. "You're not a native of this planet, are you?" 

"No I'm not, thank you very much. I'm a human..." she stopped and seemed to be caught up in thought for a moment. "Of course, you won't have heard of humans. They don't exist yet. The Doctor says they won't exist for millions of years." 

"What?" Luthen was becoming convinced that the woman was mad. He sighed, stared down at the gun and then holstered it. "Let's start this again. Hello, I'm Ryn Luthen. Nice to meet you." 

"Tegan," said the woman, reluctantly, as if she begrudged him even this simplest piece of information. "Tegan Jovanka." 

* * *

"Doctor, this doesn't look like any Earth city I've ever seen!" 

He replied with a glum nod, studying their distinctly un-Earthlike surroundings. The TARDIS had materialized on a blue-tinged hillside. Around them, the countryside stretched, dotted with trees. In the distance, at the base of the hill, stood a glimmering white city, the crisp lines of its architecture, the paleness of the stone and the general impression of grandeur it radiated reminiscent of some ancient Roman city. Behind it, the land showed field divisions and signs of farming, the blue-green of the grass replaced by an orangish-yellow crop and in some cases bare, ploughed fields. In the far distance beyond the farmland, shallow, rounded mountains decorated the skyline. Two suns shone down from the sky, one reaching its zenith, the other low and setting. 

The TARDIS stood lopsidedly on the slope of the hill. To all appearances the blue police box was leaning well beyond its centre of gravity, but the TARDIS didn't always choose to obey the laws of physics as its outer form suggested it ought and it stood solidly at this incongruous angle. 

"Doctor," Tegan said in tones that could strip paint, which suggested she thought she was being ignored and that she was losing patience. 

"Yes," he said mildly, distracted by the idyllic surroundings. "We seem to have gone somewhat astray." 

Tegan sighed, clearly intending her exasperation to be heard. "All right, so where are we this time?" she asked, and tagged on under her breath, "If you know." 

"As a matter of fact I _do_ know," the Doctor replied, trying for an injured tone. A wasted effort; she didn't even register it. He frowned, and searched his pockets for his hat. "What I don't know is how we got here." He punched the crumpled hat back into shape, jammed it on his head, and marched several paces down the hillside before she could muster a reply. 

He sensed she was following him as he slowed his pace to a stroll, relaxed and breathed deeply of the fresh air. The slightly blue grass, which wasn't grass but in the absence of the correct term it seemed a good idea to use the nearest available, was springy and slippery underfoot. He heard Tegan's footfalls as she ran across it to catch up. 

"What a splendid place!" he announced, spinning to face her with both arms outstretched and a grin on his face, vague hopes of instilling some enthusiasm in her yet. 

She folded her arms across her chest and looked annoyed. Looking annoyed was one of the things she did very well. The Doctor predicted another question was on its way, and was not disappointed. "Where are we, Doctor?" 

"Planet called Janovay." He knelt to study the grass-like growth carpeting the ground. "Binary system. Earth-type planet. Delightful looking place. Blue sky, blue grass." He rubbed his fingers across a ragged, textured blade. "Interesting." 

Tegan took an ominously deep breath, and opened her mouth, possibly to say something to the effect that he'd got all that information from the TARDIS location readout and from what was painfully obvious. Rescue appeared in the form of Nyssa, who chose that moment to step out of the TARDIS and exclaim, "It's beautiful!" 

The Doctor stood up and wiped his hands on his striped trousers. "Yes. I thought so." He waved a hand towards the brilliant white city perhaps a mile or two away. "Look at it. No roads, no air traffic. Clear air without a trace of pollution. No power lines. It's as though this place is saturated with restfulness. Have you ever been anywhere so peaceful?" 

Nyssa began to reply, but Tegan's voice overrode hers, refusing to be turned from her subject. "Doctor, this may seem a wholly unreasonable question from someone who's stuck here until you decide to leave, but do you actually know anything about this planet beyond the name you read off the TARDIS console?" 

"No, no. I may have heard the name mentioned once in passing, can't seem to recall where. It may come to me in a few hours - that's the trouble with having so many memories... " He realised he was beginning to ramble and switched back to placating Tegan. "But don't worry, this place certainly looks harmless enough. I'm sure the people will be friendly. Don't you agree, Nyssa?" 

Nyssa's long-suffering expression told him she wasn't planning on taking sides. "I'm still getting used to the fact we've landed somewhere nice. But how did we get here?" 

"Ah." The Doctor took a deep breath, and breathed it out again. He paced backwards and forwards a few times across the same two metres of ground. He took off his hat, screwed it up in both hands, stopped still with his back to his companions, glanced down at his hat and noticed its mangled state, straightened it out again carefully, put it back on his head, and spun around. "That's a tricky one." 

"Is that another way of saying the TARDIS messed up again?" asked Tegan, who had watched his performance unimpressed. "However wonderful you seem to find that city down there, it isn't going to have any high street clothes stores." 

"The TARDIS did not 'mess up again'!" the Doctor replied, quite offended. If he'd been near enough to give the police box a reassuring pat to repair any damage done to its feelings, he would have done so. "It's just..." He paused and glanced at both young women to check he had their attention. Nyssa raised her eyebrows and Tegan's expression was impatient. "Cantankerous old dear that she is, I think she gets bored doing what she's told. So every now and then she picks a destination herself. After all, why should I choose where we go all the time? It's only fair, really." 

Tegan groaned. "And I was expecting science." 

"So it's an accident again," Nyssa translated with good humour. 

Cynics, the both of them. 

"Well," said Tegan. "I suggest we jump straight back into the TARDIS and get out of here quickly before the peace is shattered and the usual nasty sorts of things start happening." 

"Oh, Tegan," Nyssa sighed. "We've been nice places too." 

"Name 'em." 

"Krasia Major was nice." 

"More like boring. You and... and Adric and the Doctor were so caught up in the scientific stuff I spent three days on my own in..." 

"Yes, yes, all right," the Doctor cut in, most particularly not wanting to get onto that subject again. "I know we're not where you wanted to be, but I can't believe you could leave this place without even taking a little look around. Where's your sense of adventure - or aesthetics for that matter? This place is so idyllic I'd have brought us here on purpose if I'd known it existed! As it is, I suggest we take advantage of a happy accident." He headed back to the TARDIS to lock the door, fishing for the key in his pockets. 

"I don't see what harm it could do to take a look around," Nyssa said, almost reluctantly, walking over to Tegan's side. "After all, you don't know where we might end up next." 

The two girls grinned at each other. It was a conspiracy, the Doctor decided, affronted. He'd only gone out of his way to show them some of the wonders of the universe. He gave up on his left coat pocket and concentrated on the right one, which turned up a question-mark embroidered handkerchief and half a jelly baby. 

"I still need some new clothes," Tegan said. 

"I still don't see what's wrong with all the clothes in the TARDIS," Nyssa said. 

He located the keys alongside a garlic bulb in his right trouser pocket. After contemplating the garlic a moment in confusion, he shrugged and shoved it back into a different pocket. The key was in his hand and halfway to the door when Tegan snapped, "Don't bother! We're going to Earth." 

The Doctor sighed and turned around. Tegan had not been overly happy once she realised she'd been dragged from Amsterdam with nothing but the white top and shorts she'd been wearing at the time, and he'd agreed to return the TARDIS to Earth so that she could go shopping. 

"It won't take long," he said. 

"You look fine as you are," Nyssa assured her. She currently wore a trouser suit similar to Nyssa's Traken ones, made from jade green velvet. It had a vast frilly collar and cuffs, and she didn't like it. But it was warm, and that was why she grudgingly wore it. 

"It's not mine. I want something designed for humans. Not something where I have to sew up all the extra sleeves. I'm not an Irallian or whatever you said this thing came from." 

"Ithalian," said Nyssa. 

"Whatever." She resorted to asking nicely; always her last resort. "Please, Doc?" 

The Doctor locked the TARDIS door and pocketed the key, making a note to remember which pocket, in case the key was needed again in a hurry. "Just a quick look around then back to the TARDIS," he said briskly. "Promise." 

Tegan threw her arms up in defeat. "As if it's ever that simple." 

* * *

"Will you pack that in, okay? I'm all right, but if you don't stop giving me these concerned looks, you won't be!" 

Luthen wondered if his strange companion was always so hostile or if he ought to give her the benefit of the doubt considering her surely stressful condition. He tentatively chose the latter. "All right. I'm just worried. You looked as if you were about to vanish a few minutes ago." 

She glowered, but explained, "It's easier to control it now I'm not alone. You being here helps my concentration. I suppose I ought to thank you for sticking around." 

"Control what?" Distracted, he caught his foot on a rock and slid down in the mud. The woman, Tegan Jovanka, glanced back to see what had happened and cursed. 

"Control the device," she said evasively. She grabbed his flesh arm and hauled him to his feet. 

She was already hurrying forward again, leaving him behind, before he could thank her. He awkwardly caught up. They were skirting the edges of the valley, staying just out of sight behind the line of the hilltops. Since she seemed to have a destination and some plan of action in mind, he contented himself to follow her. She didn't object to his presence. 

"So exactly what are we doing?" he asked as he fell into step at her side. 

She dismissed the question with a wave of one hand and a 'hush' sound, and broke pace to climb higher up the hill until she could look down the other side. Luthen copied the move. And stared. 

They had traversed about a quarter of the perimeter of the valley, and he could now see the hillside previously obscured by the city. On it there stood a squarish blue object about the size of an escape pod, leaning at a strange angle. Walking down from it towards the city were three distant figures. And one of them... 

He turned to Jovanka. "That's _you_." 

She pulled him down as he started to stand. "Don't! They mustn't see us. We have to get to the, erm, that blue box. Come on, we've got to hurry. I don't know how much time I have left." 

Luthen ducked down beneath the line of the hill again and moved after her. Despite the way her spiked shoes were sliding and sinking in the ground, she set a fair pace. A bit further on, she stopped to rest, again hunching down on the top of the hill so she could watch the progress of the three figures. "This feels so weird," she said in between harsh breaths, grief in her eyes. "I wish I could go and warn them..." 

"So why don't you?" 

The expression of contempt on her face said, 'don't you know anything?' She said, "That would cause all kinds of problems. We could all end up zapped out of existence or something. Probably." 

"Probably?" Luthen's astonishment matched his confusion. "Do you even know what you're talking about?" 

"Yes," she snapped. He deduced that she actually didn't. "Sort of. I know more about it than you do!" 

That was a fact. She began struggling back to her feet and he tried to help her. For the first time she appeared to notice something was amiss with him. "What's wrong with your arm?" 

"Needs repairs." 

"Oh, right." They continued walking, at a brisk pace. After a while she plucked up the curiosity to ask, "So how much of you is cybernetic?" 

He decided that if she started sniggering he was going to turn round and walk away from her. "None of your business," he retorted, and changed the subject, "So what was it you were running away from earlier?" 

Irritably, she said, "If you must know I thought I was being chased by a giant snake." 

"Snake?" 

"We're all afraid of something," she said defensively. "At least mine has a basis in reality. It's not like I was running from bloody mice or something. I mean, snakes can harm you." 

"I never said anything." 

"You didn't need to. You looked it." She peered over the brow of the hill again. "We're nearly there. We'll get in line with the TAR... the blue box, so we can't be seen from the city's watch-tower, then make a run for it. With any luck they won't spot us. Of course, if I was on my own I could just slip out of phase with the timestream again and they wouldn't see me-" 

He resisted the temptation to make comment about how she must have been visible to this same watch-tower in her mad dash for the hills. He also deliberately forbade himself to ask what 'out of phase with the timestream' meant. An answer he probably wouldn't understand anyway wasn't worth the trouble. 

Jovanka fumbled signalling for him to follow her and he didn't realise he was supposed to be running for the blue box until she was already halfway there. He broke cover and dashed across the open space to join her where she stood leaning against the box's side, facing away from the city. She scowled, obviously considering the error his fault entirely. "The door's on the other side. I don't think they've seen us yet. They shouldn't have seen us." She searched her pockets. "Rabbits! Don't say I've lost it." 

"Lost what?" 

"This!" She triumphantly pulled out a battered piece of metal attached to a piece of string. Strangely, it seemed to share her transparency. 

"And what's that supposed to do?" 

"It's a key, of course." 

"Of course. So what's in this... capsule... that's so crucial?" 

Her face broke into a wide smile. "Are you going to be surprised. I'll show you." She stuck her head around the corner, presumably to check that herself and the other two figures were now out of sight, then signalled for him to follow, keeping her back close against the blue box as she sidled around to the doors. He copied her actions automatically, and it occurred to him to wonder why he was letting an untrained civilian order him around. 

Jovanka raised the key to the double doors. She set it to the lock, turned it - and nothing. She wrenched at the door, and finally battered her fists against it in a burst of temper. About to offer to try, Luthen noticed he could see the blue of the box through her hands. She noticed it too, sagging against the door, face buried in her transparent arms. 

Slowly, as if taking pity on her, the doors creaked open. 

* * *

**Chapter 2**

The Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa had walked through an open gateway into a colourless city. Within the confines of the walls, everything was white, as though they were trapped inside a line drawing on an otherwise blank page. All the buildings were constructed of white stone, the street was paved with slabs of the same in a close-tessellating diamond pattern. There were no cracks where vegetation had broken through. Within the city, there didn't seem to be any gardens or parks - no signs of anything ornamental or recreational, merely the stark simplicity of the necessary. Even the people wore plain white robes. 

"Nothing like standing out in a crowd," the Doctor remarked. They themselves were the only splashes of colour that seemed to exist here. 

"Clearly a society heavily into simplicity," Nyssa agreed. "It doesn't look like they have much in the way of technology - although appearances can be deceptive." 

"They probably like maths, as well," Tegan muttered. 

The Doctor coughed, and switched his attention to the Janovians themselves, who despite the conspicuous colourfulness of the three strangers, seemed to have barely registered their presence. He noted the sparse scattering of people with interest - if the TARDIS indicators were right, this city was the only populated area on the planet, suggesting a colony, and its lack of residents suggested a colony in decline. He tried to catch the eye of a man walking past, without success. The Janovian's eyes flickered across to him for the briefest instant before turning away. 

Perplexed, the Doctor removed his hat and scratched his head. "Curious." 

"They don't seem very worried by the appearance of aliens among them." Nyssa had moved close to his side and leaned closer still to whisper the words. He guessed it was their very lack of concern that made her so uneasy. 

"Yes, you would expect we'd attract a little attention. Obviously they're either very familiar with alien visitors or they've evolved without a sense of curiosity - which would cause one to wonder how they evolved at all." He broke off, realised he was for some reason wringing his hat into a mangled mess in his hands, stopped and stared at it, then straightened it carefully and put it back on his head. He glanced down at his companions. "We're not going to find out standing here. Come along." He surveyed the two paths into the city, took a few steps in one direction then changed his mind and followed the other, deciding that one looked more likely to lead to the city centre. 

The few people they passed on the street were as serene and unflappable as the ones by the gates. Although they looked human enough (not particularly unusual, the Doctor admitted), he was certain they weren't. And it wasn't a certainty springing from his knowledge that, chronologically speaking, the human race didn't exist yet and wouldn't for a long time to come. These people simply could not be mistaken for human - it positively radiated from them. To the Doctor, they felt alien yet familiar. He mentally noted down telepathy as a possibility, then scribbled it out and considered the familiarity again. And was ambushed by a feeling that it mightn't have been a good idea to stay on this planet. 

"It can't be," he said to himself, stopping in his tracks, vaguely aware of Tegan cursing as, distracted by her study of the box-like houses, she bumped into his arm. "This is the past. The distant past..." 

Trying to reassure himself and failing, he shelved the thought in the back of his mind to examine later and reconsidered telepathy as an option since on the whole it was much less worrying. 

"What was that, Doctor?" Nyssa asked. 

"Just thinking aloud," he replied, and started walking again. "We've travelled a long way into the past. Back into ancient galactic history, in fact." As he said the words, realisation blazed across his thoughts. "_Janovay_! I knew I'd heard the name before." The Doctor stared around with new eyes, remembering half-heard lectures at the academy on Gallifrey, when he'd been more interested in plotting with the Rani an evil scheme to time-jump the lecture-hall forward to the end of classes. "Janovay... well I never." 

"You've remembered something?" asked Nyssa. 

"Hmm. Ancient Galactic History. Compulsory course at the academy. But that was a long time ago." He shut his eyes, trying to concentrate on the memory. He had the sense that something important was evading his thoughts. He shook his head and let out a sigh. Gave in and opened his eyes again. "It's famous for something, I know that much for sure." 

"Can't be that important," Tegan reasoned. "You'd remember if it was something important." 

"Mm." He hoped she was right, had a bad feeling she wasn't. Something was very wrong. On top of his suspicions, he was beginning to feel a nagging sensation inside his head, like an itch in his mind, which could signify some minor temporal distortion concentrated nearby. "It would be in the TARDIS databank. Perhaps. Or other historical records back in the TARDIS." 

He was seriously considering going back to look when an exclamation from Nyssa drew his attention. She bent down to pick up an object from the pavement, and held it out for him to inspect. He fished out his half-frames and put them on to examine it. "Now what could that be doing here?" 

"A piece of wiring from some sort of machine?" Tegan said, looking over his shoulder. "But these people don't look as if they have any technology to speak of." 

"Maybe things are not as they seem, as indeed Nyssa suggested," the Doctor mused. 

"Unless it was left by other alien visitors like ourselves," Nyssa said. "It's a possibility, considering their lack of reaction to us. And it is the only sign of technology we've seen since arriving here." She took it back to investigate. "It looks old - beginning to corrode. You'd certainly need a higher level of technology than these people display to manufacture it." 

"Strange for a society to stay at this level if it's had any contact with spacefaring races, though. You'd think someone would have given them a few pointers." The Doctor watched a horse and cart trundle across their path some way ahead, where another road intersected the one they followed. Horse? No - he squinted, and removed his half-frames. It was similar to a horse, but it had a flatter, broader face and thicker legs. The cart itself was efficiently constructed but basic, and an unlikely sight in a society with technology. 

He was about to suggest they get back to the TARDIS when he noticed what was being transported in the cart. Nyssa gave a small cry of astonishment and they exchanged glances. Then, the Doctor broke stride to sprint after it. The noise of Tegan's heels on the paving reassured him his companions followed close behind. 

It quickly became clear he wasn't going to catch up. The cart was moving at a moderate speed and had too much of a head start. The Doctor yelled, "Excuse me! Wait! I'd like to talk to you!" with a last burst of energy as his burning lungs forced him to slow down, but it was no use, the driver either couldn't hear or was ignoring him. 

He halted to catch his breath. Running was harder than normal under the burning heat of two suns. A moment later his companions caught up at a pace and posture more closely resembling a crawl. 

"I thought I saw something that looked like a machine gun in with that lot!" Tegan announced between gulping great lungfuls of air. 

"I could make out part of the navigation array of a ship's drive system," Nyssa said. "And radio equipment." 

"Along with an assortment of component parts and tools and broken pieces," the Doctor concluded. "Very strange indeed." 

"Like seeing a caveman drinking Fosters." 

"Hm. Quite, Tegan. Obviously they're collecting it from somewhere. It would be interesting to see if we can find out where." Even as he spoke, he saw an empty cart round a street corner a short distance in front of them, heading back the way they'd just run from. "Aha, and here's our ride there, right on time!" He inclined his head towards it. His companions saw what he intended and looked doubtful. The cart was almost level with their position. 

The Doctor sprang forward and caught the side of it, hauled himself over and into the back. About Tegan, only seconds behind, he had few worries - she grabbed the side, determination on her face, and cartwheeled over, landing in a messy heap but recovering herself to help him catch Nyssa and pull her safely aboard. 

"Do excuse us," he said politely to the driver, who spared them the briefest of unconcerned glances. "You don't mind us hitching a lift, do you?" 

He took the Janovian's silence as agreement. 

* * *

Luthen stared around the interior of the blue capsule, his brain having problems accepting that the room he was standing in was contained within a box that, according to its outside dimensions, should hold no more than a few cubic metres of space. He reached out to touch the nearest wall. It felt solid enough. Luthen came to the conclusion he'd gone insane as the only explanation that made sense. 

Jovanka had gone straight to the hexagonal control console in the centre of the room, and pulled a lever that closed the doors behind them. Now she leaned weakly against the console, taking deep breaths. She noticed at the same time as he did that she looked solid again, contemplated her hands in wonder for a moment, then grinned broadly at him. "It worked! I wasn't sure it would. The TARDIS has stabilised the deterioration - it's sealed off from the world outside, so the molecular degradation brought on by the machine's duplication effect can't affect me in here." From the sound of it she was only repeating verbatim something said to her by somebody else, but she still seemed to take smug delight in Luthen's incomprehension. 

He was still trying to take in the fact that the small blue box had a large control room inside when he noticed an open door, beyond which a corridor led to yet more rooms. 

"What's the matter?" asked Jovanka, smirking. "Haven't you ever been inside a dimensionally transcendental Time and Relative Dimension in Space vehicle before?" 

Luthen's temper snapped. "Oh, sure. Everyday sight where I come from. No, of course I haven't! Now would you please explain exactly what's going on?" He took a deep breath and attempted to regain his calm. 

Jovanka looked first angry, then recalcitrant. "Okay. I'm sorry. Look, Ryn, or whatever your name is, I'm not telling you anything because I don't know if I can trust you. I do realise you might be perfectly trustworthy and all this totally uncalled for, so I'm sorry. You can stick around, if you want, but you have to understand, I can't afford to explain anything I don't have to. After all, you are the merciless enemy these people have been telling us so much about, even if you don't look it." 

"Merciless enemy?" Luthen repeated. "That's a good one. I'm as lost and far away from my home as you are." 

"Unlikely," she said with a bitter snort of laughter. 

"Whatever... We're both trapped here, on an alien world. It makes sense we should stick together." 

"That's not going to last for long." She placed both hands flat against the surface of the console, staring at her fingers as though attempting to see through them to the metal underneath. "It's all right for you. The Janovians won't hurt you unless they have to, and your own people are going to be here within days to pick you up. Right before they wipe out all other life on the planet." 

"We don't do things like that-" 

"Don't give me that! Haven't you been listening? It's your lot who are to blame for everything that's happening here!" 

Luthen fell into silence, a silence that Jovanka seemed unwilling to break. She left him to his thoughts while she tottered around the room trying to read the various instrumentation. Eventually, Luthen dredged up another question. "What do you mean, it's not going to be for long? I thought you said you were safe in here." Though they were far from a perfect team, he shuddered at the thought of being trapped alone. 

"Yes, I am... but we can't stay in here. Because in a little while there'll be people here, and we wouldn't be able to get out." She gestured emphatically with both arms as she spoke. "What could I possibly hope to achieve stuck in here anyway? I can't fly this thing, so my friends will die and I won't even have tried to do anything!" 

"How long is a little while? Long enough for me to try fixing this arm and some of my weaponry?" 

"Long enough for me to do what I came back here for and to get out. I don't know how long it'll take, but we have some hours yet, before they come." Jovanka folded her arms and paced across the room, unhappy with the request. She studied him a moment, and sighed. "I suppose you've time enough." She added, in a low mutter, "So long as you're as harmless as you seem." 

"Thanks." Luthen's gratitude skirted the edges of sarcasm. 

* * *

Tegan didn't think much of either the alien city or the aliens themselves. Any civilisation oblivious to the concept of idle chatter was most assuredly not to be trusted. Aside from that, she was being shaken around to the point of feeling sick, she'd got splinters in her hands from her vault into the back of the cart, and she was having little success in trying to pick them out while the cart was in motion. 

They drove over a bump in the road, which drove the splinter she was trying to dig out further into her palm, which provoked her to snap out an obscenity. The Doctor twisted around to direct at her his most disapproving glance. The problem with his most disapproving glance was that while it might have had significant impact in his earlier incarnation, in his present one it made him look petulant, and Tegan always had to resist the urge to snigger. She didn't think the 800-or-so year old alien had quite got used to looking little older than she herself, in human terms. "I've got splinters," she said defensively, allowing the tone of her voice to deliver the unspoken, 'And its your fault'. 

She met the next bump in the road unprepared due to the effort she was putting into glaring at him. Her teeth rattled and her shoulder received a ferocious crack on the side of the cart. This time she caught the curse before it left her tongue. For some reason, the Doctor was as touchy about bad language as he was about megalomaniacs and psychopaths out for galactic domination or whatever. 

"When we find someone in charge, we'll have to complain about the state of these roads!" he exclaimed and, as often the case, she honestly didn't know whether it was a joke or he meant it seriously. 

As they progressed deeper into the city, the buildings were larger and more official of character. There were more people on the streets, but still not many and the impression of emptiness continued to pervade the atmosphere. More unsettling was the silence. None of the people spoke. The only sounds were their own voices and the clatter of the wheels. 

"Peaceful, isn't it?" said Nyssa, a little later, the edginess in her voice conveying exactly what she meant by 'peaceful'. Tegan shared a sympathetic eye contact. She wondered if they'd humoured the Doctor's curiosity quite long enough, but decided to give him a little while longer before she started sniping at him proper. There did seem an unusual gravity behind his not-unusual interest, but she wasn't sure what to make of it. His reactions could be irritatingly hard to read. In the past, she'd seen him walk into almost certain death with a casual smile on his face, and she'd seen him go into a panic when he thought he'd lost his hat. 

"It looks like we're there," he announced, interrupting her thoughts. "Fascinating!" 

He was staring at something directly in front of them. Tegan had to risk standing up to see. She craned her neck over the top of the driver's head, and almost lost her precarious balance when she saw what had gripped the Doctor's interest. "That's impossible!" she said. "It's ridiculous!" 

The cart drew to a halt. What she was looking at, in the middle of the street in front of a large, official-looking building, was an archaeological dig. There was a big hole dug out of the street, with removed mud and paving slabs piled neatly to one side. The Janovians inside the hole carefully handed unearthed artefacts to others standing on the surface. Except this was the dawn of history, and a society wholly lacking in technology, and the items they were digging up were technological components and equipment years beyond their level of development. 

"Apparently not," said Nyssa, with similar bewilderment. 

At that point the driver of the cart turned around and gestured to them - a wave of the hand that unmistakably signalled they should disembark. They piled off, Tegan wondering if the others were as relieved as she to find their feet solidly on the ground again. The Doctor certainly showed no sign of it, proceeding to thank the silent Janovian, at length, for his unintentional taxi service. 

Tegan straightened her crumpled clothes and stared blankly at Nyssa, who shrugged, mystified, and stared blankly back. Then they both switched their stares onto the hole in the ground from which the Janovians were working hard to produce the sorts of items they'd earlier seen in transit. 

"This is somebody's idea of a very strange joke," Tegan decided. Although she was beginning to realise that, the more she studied the scene, the less it looked like an archaeological dig. For a start, though there was a large and indisputable hole in the ground, nobody was digging. The earth at the sides of the hole was compacted hard, as if the actual digging had been finished some time ago. Furthermore, the equipment people were carrying out was not dulled or muddied. It hadn't just been carelessly buried or dumped but... stored? 

The Doctor finished apologising to the driver and joined them. He looked flustered about something. 

"Well?" asked Nyssa. 

He searched his pockets for his half-frames, a more obvious stalling ploy than usual since he certainly didn't need them to peer down at Nyssa or to answer her question. 

"What is it, Doctor?" Tegan demanded. She was sure he suspected something about Janovay he was keeping from them, and was getting tired of his evasiveness. 

He found his half-frames but didn't put them on, simply frowning at them like he'd forgotten why he'd wanted them in the first place. "I have a feeling I shouldn't be here," he said. "As though I'm interfering in a future I shouldn't be, a future that's too close to home... but this is the distant past. The earliest intelligent civilisations to form. Ancient history." He broke off to carefully remove his jacket, replace his half-frames in the pocket, and fold it over one arm. "It's hot here." 

"I don't need to be told that," Tegan retorted. "I feel like I'm being roasted alive inside this thing." Why was it the only time they landed somewhere that was warm rather than freezing cold, she had exchanged her usual brief outfits for a warm one? "Now, what about the dig?" She stepped out of the way of the Janovians who were beginning to pile their findings into the cart, who walked around the three strangers so impassively they might not have been there at all. 

"Well, nobody seems too worried about our presence here... let's go and take a closer look." He was already walking away before she had chance to disagree. 

She and Nyssa caught up with him at the edge of the pit, where he was standing close to the several-metre drop. Tegan tugged on the back of his cricketing jersey to haul him a step back, but he just looked cross and moved forward again. She rolled her eyes in exasperated defeat. 

"It's some kind of vault," the Doctor concluded, oblivious, in the ridiculously happy voice he used when he discovered something he considered terribly interesting. "Yes, I see now... they stored their technology down there, for whatever reason, a long time ago, and now, again for reasons unknown, they want it back." He frowned suddenly. "Or maybe not for reasons unknown after all," he added, casting a nervous glance towards the sky. 

Tegan followed his gaze. The sky was empty, as she'd expected, and, dual suns aside, perfectly normal. 

The Doctor was looking to Nyssa for approval of his theory. She nodded slowly. "It's not necessarily the only explanation... but it fits. They outlawed technology? Why would they do that? Why abandon progress after coming so far?" 

"A war, maybe?" Tegan wondered. "Would that make sense?" 

"It might if there were any indication that massively destructive weapons had ever been used on this planet," the Doctor said. "But we've seen no evidence of that. Besides, I doubt it would be so easy to give up all the comforts of technology, especially in the aftermath of war. If they did give it up they must have been very determined... am I missing something?" He turned to Nyssa again, who shrugged, no wiser. 

Tegan was beginning to feel bored. Once the initial shock of the dig's incongruity had worn off, she realised she wasn't especially interested in any of this. She didn't honestly care why the Janovians were unearthing their technology, or why they had buried it in the first place. She just wanted to get back to the TARDIS and leave the unsettling planet for good. The strange thing was, she would've sworn the Doctor felt the same way, except something seemed to be drawing him on, calling for him to stay despite his discomfort. 

She squinted down into the hole. About four metres down, a hatch had been unearthed. It stood open, and through it she could see, dimly lit, smooth surfaces of artificial walls and a narrow metal staircase. It was up this that workers brought the artefacts to the surface. She leaned further over, trying to see how far down the stairway descended. Her heeled shoes skidded on the compacted mud and she let out a shriek as her legs slid from under her. 

The Doctor caught her around the waist, hauled her back and stood her upright again. He calmly dusted the mud from her clothes with his hat. 

"Are you alright?" asked a Nyssa all too obviously trying not to grin. 

"Perfectly, thank you." She didn't quite manage to pull off the offended act, due to the huge snort of laughter which burst through before she'd finished speaking. 

The Doctor interrupted, "Look, the cart's leaving again. This is our chance to find out where these things are being taken." 

"Oh, no," Nyssa said. 

"That thing was bad enough when it was empty!" 

"Well, this time we won't ride in the back." He left them behind again as he hurried to talk to the driver, who was as unresponsive as before. A moment later, he waved them over, patting his hand on the surface of the bench-like seat at the front, where there was enough space for two people to sit next to the Janovian. 

Tegan hesitantly climbed on, followed by a still more hesitant Nyssa. "What are you going to do?" she asked the Doctor. 

In reply, he flung his jacket into the back of the cart and stepped up onto a small ledge above the wheel. He grinned as he clung there. 

"Oh, surely not," Tegan groaned, feeling ill just watching him. She wondered if it would be embarrassing for him to explain to other Time Lords that his fifth regeneration had been brought on by falling off the back of a horse-and-cart. She shook her head in disgust and cracked it against the wooden boards at her back as the cart unexpectedly began to move. 

Slightly malicious satisfaction was to be found in the Doctors frantic scrabbles as his grip almost failed. 

After only a few streets, she realised something was wrong. She craned her head around to face the Doctor - she saw from his frown that he was aware of it too. But it was Nyssa who voiced it, slightly accusingly, to the driver. "This isn't the way we travelled before." 

"No," the Janovian agreed. "You are required to meet with the Councillors. They will answer your questions." 

* * *

**Chapter 3**

"Do you ever get tired of corridors?" Tegan asked, a touch of irritation in her voice, as they were led through the interior of a large building lacking much in the way of decoration both inside and out. Like the TARDIS, it was bigger than its exterior would suggest, extending back some considerable distance behind its street-facing facade. Tegan's voice sounded unreasonably loud, echoing hollowly. 

Their Janovian taxi-driver had set them off in front of the building, where another of the silent aliens was already waiting for them. He, their guide, answered their questions briefly as possible, if at all. The Doctor wondered if the natives were always so restrained. 

He was beginning to think they were trapped inside an endless eternity of corridors when their guide halted in front of a door, silently opened it and waited for them to walk through. The Doctor shrugged and entered the room. 

It was not an overly large room, but it had a high ceiling which made it seem larger. The dimensions of the chamber and the accuracy of its measurements harmonically corresponded to various advanced theories of spacial manipulation that ought to be centuries beyond the Janovians. 

Three of the aliens waited within. Two, both men, sat quietly in chairs. The third, a woman, had stopped still in the midst of pacing the room. The men looked as serene as the others they'd seen. She, on the other hand, looked somewhat agitated, perhaps as close to nervousness as these people were capable of. She stood for a moment taking in the three strangers' appearance, and the Doctor felt oddly as though he was being catalogued, useful information filed away in her mind for further analysis. He made an effort to meet her gaze calmly. 

"Welcome," she said. She was a little taller than he, and it looked unnatural, as though her bones had been stretched. She made up for her lack of grace with a uniquely purposeful manner of movement. Her red hair was tied back simply but was askew and escaping the binding. A dusting of darker freckles marked her sun-darkened skin. Her dress was the customary robe, but a bright red cloth belt around her waist announced her distinct from the norm. "I am First Councillor Verani. My fellow Council members you see before you are Councillor Crivthen-" she indicated the older of the two men, who had iron grey hair and a grim smile "-And Councillor Bannot." The young Janovian inclined his head, but neither his expression or the direction of his gaze altered. He focused not on the three visitors, but past them. 

"Fantastic to meet you!" The Doctor remembered his hat, and whipped it off apologetically. "I'm the Doctor, and my companions here are Nyssa-" he placed a hand on her shoulder, to both indicate and reassure "-and-" 

"Tegan Jovanka," Tegan said brightly. "G'day." 

He blinked at her, his thoughts knocked off track by the interruption. He tried to realign his concentration. "Yes, quite. As I was saying, very nice to meet you and all that, but we really ought to be going. I have a distinct feeling I shouldn't be here." 

"Really?" Verani's eyebrows raised quizzically. "I assure you, you are all welcome. All bar the Karalian are welcome on Janovay. Indeed, you are more than welcome - you are needed." 

"Karalian?" repeated the Doctor bleakly. Suspicions solidified into fact. It became all the more necessary to get off Janovay, and quickly. But it wasn't going to be easy. He was getting the impression that despite their benign appearance, these people were not going to allow he, Nyssa and Tegan to leave in a hurry. And though he doubted they would use direct force, he imagined they had equally effective subtler means. 

Verani smiled. "Forgive me; I get ahead of myself. You would like refreshments?" She signalled to their guide before there was chance to reply, and he hurried away. The Doctor noticed that the older councillor, Crivthen, was drinking from a rough pot mug, and he found himself hoping they had tea on Janovay, even if it would add another incongruity to the situation. He could really do with a nice comforting pot of tea. 

"How come you're so happy to see us?" Tegan asked suspiciously. She'd been looking around the room in slightly bored interest and now stared up into the gaping expanse of the high ceiling. The Doctor would have preferred a more subtle approach to the situation. "I wouldn't have thought you get many visitors here?" 

"On the contrary, this planet is on the main shipping route between the Miros system and the planet Chalx. We've known many different races to stop here on route, although there are few now, since the war," Verani answered calmly, at ease using vocabulary at odds with her surroundings. 

"The war?" 

"Yes... Nyssa, isn't it? The Karalian Union have become rather determined of late to annex the Miros system and its related resources and allies." 

"Meaning you?" Tegan blurted. "You're in danger from them too. That's what all this is about." 

"Quite," replied Verani. 

"What are the Karalians?" Nyssa asked, failing to pick up her note of reluctance. "Why are they so bad?" 

There was a brief silence. Verani's lips were set in a slight frown; she looked deep in thought. The other two councillors exchanged glances, and the elder moved to respond. 

"They're a Cyborg race," the Doctor said wearily, deciding it was about time he let his companions know of his misgivings, hopefully without letting the Janovians on to too much. "A more primitive version of the Cybermen, or so it was speculated. The main power in this part of the universe at the moment. Considered to be rather ruthless. They work in the same way as Cybermen - those they conquer become a part of their cyber race." He noticed Tegan shudder slightly. Nyssa looked intrigued. She mouthed the words 'ancient history?' and he nodded. 

"How could you pass through this sector of space and not know of the Karalians?" Councillor Crivthen asked. His voice was gruff, faintly ill-tempered, but the Doctor sensed in him a directness Verani lacked. "And exactly what are these 'Cybermen' of which you speak?" 

A strangeness had taken over the expression of the First Councillor. She said quietly, almost trance-like, "It seems I have heard the word before, although I know I have not." 

The Doctor looked at her sharply. "No. You haven't." The Cybermen wouldn't exist for quite a while yet. 

"You said something?" Verani asked, her expression back to normal but her voice sounding shaken. 

"Nothing at all." He grinned brightly, which he didn't expect to fool her, but which did persuade her to drop the subject for the moment at least. "Ah, you were saying then that we are not the only alien visitors to Janovay?" 

"Assuredly not. In fact, we have a citizen of Miros II in residence in the city at this very time, aiding us... in the same way we beg of you to aid us." In the short pause after that statement, the drinks arrived. The Doctor stared down at his. It looked suspiciously like tea. 

"You want our help?" Tegan asked. "What for?" 

"To stop the invasion," Crivthen rumbled. 

Tegan snorted, then seemed to realise he was serious and gaped at him. "What - what can we possibly do to stop the Karalian invasion?" 

"You come from a world of technology. Ours, as you have seen, has been forbidden for centuries. We retain the equipment but lack the knowledge. We have no idea how these items work, or even what they all are. Verani has been able to put names and purposes to some of them and our friend from Miros has been a great help, but there is so much to be done, and we have little time." 

"I'm hardly a genius myself! Just because we come from a world with technology doesn't mean we know everything about the science surrounding us... besides, the Karalians have some pretty powerful weapons by the sound of it, and so must the races they've already conquered. Dredging up this stuff can't be the answer to all your problems, surely?" 

Crivthen's face was grim. "When it is our only chance, it is the one we must take, however small. But I am told... that some of the machines hidden in the vaults are of far greater strength and sophistication than any the Karalians possess." 

"But how could that be?" Tegan turned to the Doctor for an answer. He caught her eye and shook his head. 

"Tegan may be able to help you more than she realises," Nyssa said sympathetically. "And I certainly know enough to lend a hand." She too turned to him, but it was with a rather more challenging gaze. "Doctor? We can help these people, Doctor." 

He mangled his hat between his hands, torn at the thought of the line they had to draw now before they became any more involved. "No," he said, afraid the words came out more brusquely than intended. "I'm sorry, but we can't. We have to leave, Nyssa. Tegan. Now." 

* * *

Putting the dismantled energy weapon back together was a tedious task, broken by the occasional oath floating down the TARDIS corridors from wherever Jovanka was working to where he sat on the floor in the console room, and it drew Luthen's thoughts to morbid contemplations of the past and future - what he had of a future. 

He couldn't help but wonder if he ought to be missing his people more than he was. After all, they were what he fought for, killed for, and that should indicate a certain amount of dedication. But the truth was that however mad or unstable Jovanka might be, she was more alive than any Karalian he had ever encountered. She was radiant with life, despite the irony that she was dying. 

But then, they were all dying. That was the point. How long did he have left now? The surgeon had estimated three years of physical usefulness to the Karalian Union when he had first been diagnosed with the active strain of Amnos Syndrome. After that, a slow wasting away or a mercy killing. It had been almost two years since the diagnosis. The intervening years had been spent first in arresting the corrosive capabilities of the disease and setting him up with artificial limbs to replace the ones eaten by the AmnoSyn, then later in combat training. And finally, after only three months of active service, he'd inexplicably ended up here, on Janovay. A few days ahead of the invasion force. 

He'd been seventeen. A reasonable shot of normal life compared to some, not so long as others managed to live undamaged. It was still in him, of course - Amnos Syndrome, the curse of his people. It had lain quiet in his cells since the day he was born. It would kill him eventually. 

Fearfully, he wondered if he was already responsible for bringing the contamination to Janovay. In its temporarily arrested state it shouldn't be communicable, but you never knew for sure. And there was always a chance the disease could become active again anytime. Not that it mattered, since the invasion force would inevitably bring the contamination with them when they arrived. 

He completed the final adjustment on the energy gun and slotted the power pack back into place. The arduous task of repairing the damaged equipment complete, he realised he wasn't sure how long he'd been engrossed in the task. 

He'd been aware of Jovanka's invective all the time on a subconscious level, but abruptly a scream of frustration startled him. Concerned, he levered himself to his feet, leaning against the roundelled wall for support, and ventured down the corridor following the direction of the sounds. 

A few corridors later he was beginning to think he was trapped in a maze. He came across an open door onto a smallish room that looked like some sort of lab. Edging through the doorway, he saw Jovanka standing with her back to him in front of a work desk covered by a scattering of lab containers filled with various substances. Unaware of his presence, she screamed again in fury and brought both fists down on the desk top. Its contents jumped and rattled. Realising she was being watched, she whirled around, snatching up an empty glass container - presumably with the intent to hurl it at the intruder. 

"Jovanka!" Luthen ducked. A few seconds later when the blow still hadn't impacted, he slowly straightened up. She was standing looking at him, not moving. 

"It's you," she muttered, accusatory, lowering her arm reluctantly as if she might still decide to throw the container at something out of sheer temper. "I don't suppose you know anything about chemistry?" 

Luthen shook his head. Took a few cautious steps into the lab, not wholly convinced it was a safe thing to do. 

"Rabbits!" She glared at him as though it was his responsibility to know and he'd failed her miserably. "This is ridiculous. I didn't even pass 0-level science at school! How on Earth did I expect to be able to do anything? Why did I put myself through any of this!?" 

She leaned back against the table, looking drained. He noticed for the first time how tired she was, and how it wasn't only her clothes that were ragged and torn. There were bruises and scratches on her exposed skin. She looked as though she had been in battle. The purpose that had driven her before had left her eyes, and now he saw her as she was - a small, fragile-seeming woman, little older then a girl, not combat trained or qualified to deal with a situation such as she found herself in. 

"Whose lab is this?" Luthen asked quietly. 

"It's Nyssa's." She put a hand to her head as though fighting a sudden stab of pain, or grief. "Or at least, she uses it. I suppose it's the Doctor's really. This is his ship, we're just... passengers." She sighed and met his eyes, frankness in hers. "Nyssa told me what I needed to do. I memorised it. But everything's scrambled up inside my head now and I can't remember it all. Only pieces, and that's no good. A mistake could make things even worse. It means I can't do anything and all of this has been for nothing. But I'm still dying - I can't do anything about that either!" Her voice had risen as she spoke. Luthen winced, his head throbbing. 

"You should try to calm down. There are always options. It may not be as hopeless as it seems. Can you contact your friends? The Janovians? Is there nothing either of them can do?" He risked resting a hand on her arm in an attempt at comfort, and she immediately slapped it away. 

"They might be able to do something, but I can't ask them. Haven't you understood a word I've said? All this has already happened. I can't go to anyone because this is the past, and there's nothing I can do to stop things happening as they did before. So I'll just fade away to nothing..." She covered her face with her hands as though about to burst into tears, and he reached out to her again. 

She slapped his hand away again. "Will you pack it in! I have to think." She hesitated. "Maybe there is a chance. Either way we can't stay here. We have to get back to the city... With any luck I can hang on long enough to sort this mess out yet!" She marched out of the lab, then paused in the doorway and looked rather sheepishly back at Luthen. "That is, erm, if your arm's fixed and all that." 

He nodded. "It's done. Everything's fixed." 

"Isn't that portable armoury rather heavy to carry around all the time?" she asked, then contemplated said armoury in sudden silence. She shook her head and sighed. "No, I suppose shooting Verani at this point would only cause even more trouble." She glared at Luthen, faintly accusingly. "I suppose you've killed dozens of people?" 

"One, I think." He shuddered at the thought of the enemy he'd shot, back on the ship, moments before falling into the drive. She gave him a sceptical look. "I've only been in active service to the Karalian Union for three months, and most of that was spent on ship duty. I've only been in combat once." 

Jovanka said, "I don't believe it! Of all the menacing Cyborg commandos that must be out there, I get saddled with a rookie!" She huffed and marched off down the corridor. Her voice floated back: "Are you coming with me or not?" 

Luthen spat a curse and followed at an awkward, lopsided run. 

* * *

The Doctor had spun around, presumably with the intention of marching out the door. Nyssa was not sure why the Doctor, usually so willing to devote himself to a hopeless cause, was refusing to help in this case. But she knew it had to be something serious, and wished now that she hadn't offered the Janovians her help so impulsively. 

The Doctor did not get very far. Before she and Tegan could even move to follow him, Verani stood in his way, her arms outstretched to cover the doorway. She had moved there like lightening, and her very lack of concern for the dignity of her title accorded her a dignity of majestic proportion as she blocked them inside the room, her height towering over even the Doctor. "No," she said. Her voice was soft, without aggression, but Nyssa sensed that she was prepared to go a long way to get what she wanted. "You can't abandon us. We've waited, we've prayed for the help you can give. You can save us." 

"We can't save you." The Doctor's words were harsh, an unmoveable finality, but Nyssa saw the depths of sadness in his eyes. He wanted to help the Janovians. For a moment he stared sadly at Verani and it seemed his conscience was going to give in, but instead he firmly gripped Verani's wrists and set her aside. "So sorry - must dash," he said, sounding faintly embarrassed. Nyssa could only stand and gape at the uncharacteristic action as he disregarded Verani, abandoned the Janovians, and pushed the door open. 

Verani was not someone easily pushed aside. Before he could cross the threshold into the corridor, she grabbed his arm, hauling him back. It made Nyssa wince just to witness the depth of the creases her fingers bored into his cricketing jersey, the stark white of her knuckles. The Doctor looked pained, annoyed and puzzled in rapid succession. 

"Hey!" snapped Tegan. "You let go of him right now!" 

Nyssa was horribly aware that the Australian was ready to launch herself at the alien woman. "Please stop," she said, attempting to interpose herself between Verani and the Doctor. "We can talk reasonably about this." 

Help arrived from an unexpected source. The other two councillors had been watching aghast, struck dumb by their colleague's actions. Now, they recovered themselves to intercede. 

"Verani!" Councillor Bannot said. "We cannot coerce these people. We have no automatic right to their help, we can only take it freely given." 

Crivthen echoed his fellow. "Verani! I beg you, cease this violence. Think what you are about. Do as the girl asks." 

From her unique viewpoint, looking up into Verani's face, Nyssa was the only one positioned to see the expression of despair that crossed it, before the First Councillor released her grip and stepped back. With a shocked innocence, the alien woman bowed her head. "Forgive me. I act only out of concern for my people. I am sorry." 

The Doctor frowned as he brushed down the sleeve of his cricketing jersey. His reassuring smile was rather too strained to reassure Nyssa. His reply to Verani was unusually sharp. "So am I. But we can't help you. It's impossible." 

"Why?" Tegan demanded, to be simultaneously shushed by both of them. 

"Yes, why?" asked Verani, clinging to the question as support. "We are not asking you to risk your own lives or to sacrifice anything more than a few days of your time to our cause. But by doing so little you could save our civilisation. If it is payment you desire then I assure you Janovay's vaults hold more than just machinery. Won't you at least stay and listen to what we have to say?" 

"No," the Doctor said. "Sorry, quite impossible. Have to be going." 

"Surely it could do no harm to listen," Nyssa said quickly, seeing a slight darkening of the freckles on Verani's face and taking it as a sign of growing annoyance. 

"Oh yes it could! If these people persuade me to interfere it could have catastrophic results on the timeline. Plus that lot on Gallifrey would most definitely not miss this one and I really don't want to be tried and sentenced again!" He waved his arms agitatedly, almost cracking Verani across the nose with the hat he still held. 

Verani was oblivious to the narrow miss. Her eyes were unfocused again, as though she was staring a million centuries into the future, disconnected from the moment. "Gallifrey..." she repeated, as if it was a magic word. The Doctor stared at her, eyes widened, absolute horror fleetingly crossing his face before he pointedly jerked his head around away from her and ignored her aggressively. 

"Hang on," Tegan said, by now probably particularly fed up at this barrage of incomprehensible events if Nyssa knew her friend as well as she thought. "They're saying all we have to do is listen for a little while, then we can clear off? What's wrong with indulging them a little, if we get to leave in the end?" 

The Doctor sighed and put his hands over his face. Nyssa imagined he was slowly counting to ten. After a moment he lowered his hands, and smiled brightly at the three councillors. He seemed polite and reasonable, as though he'd deliberately forced his normal good humour to re-emerge, but she guessed it was only a superficial veneer. She could sense worry underlying it. 

The Doctor started to say something, then stopped, his mouth half open. After a moment of rather transparent indecisiveness and conscience-wrestling, he said, painfully politely, "Councillors. If you would permit - I'd like to have a few moments to discuss the situation with my companions?" 

The three Janovians exchanged glances and an agreement seemed to pass between them. As one, they nodded to their visitors and filed out of the room. Nyssa stared after them incredulously, as the Doctor was also doing, having expected to be shown to another room rather then left to the councillors' chamber itself. Tegan marched over to one of the vacated chairs and sat down. As the door shut on the Janovians' exit, she asked, "All right, Doctor, what exactly is going on here? Why can't we help these people? We've done this sort of thing before." 

"Yes," Nyssa echoed. "We've interfered before, what's so different this time?" 

"Questions, questions..." He sighed and winced as he rubbed the arm Verani had grabbed. She watched him pace the room a few times. He seemed almost about to burst at the seams with nervous energy. He moved to sit down near Tegan, but immediately changed his mind and stood up again, flinging the hat and jacket he carried over the chair instead. After a moment of further indecisiveness, he said, "Let me give you a history lesson." 

Tegan groaned and mimed thumping herself in the head repeatedly with both fists, and he ignored her. 

"Ancient history! Compulsory course at the Academy!" His voice had risen to a high pitch, as it tended to when he got excitable like this. He continued to pace the room as he spoke. "Before humans, before the Time Lords and Traken... the dawn of civilisation in the universe. The first few intelligent races to develop and explore the stars. That's the time period we're talking about! One of the most well documented of the races around at this time is the Karalian." Nyssa's attention snapped up the familiar word and the sudden relevance of his lecture. Tegan stopped her bored study of her cracked nail varnish and paid attention. The Doctor continued, "Think of them as a more primitive version of the Cybermen, expanding to assimilate different planets and cultures into the Karalian Union. Their race has been a source of study for archaeologists and historians for millennia, ever since the first few relics of their civilisation were discovered by the Krian, the race who will inhabit this section of the galaxy in several thousands of years time." He paused to catch his breath, something he hadn't done throughout the lengthy speech. Nyssa had a feeling she knew what he was going to say. 

"The history of the Karalians' campaign and their amazing progress, a line of conquered planets stretching to maybe a hundred star systems where their relics have been found, is widely known. An incredibly adaptable race - they accomplished the impossible. Conquered planets within days, or so findings on several of the major expedition sites have revealed." He paused once again, and his brow creased with concern and concentration as he glanced at his companions to check they were still following. "Major expedition sites including, of course, Anka Major, the Corruda series of planets, Themia Syrus, and then there's Janovay... hurriedly excavated by the Krian under appalling conditions, whose celebrated findings on the subject have been passed on to race after race. Now - Nyssa, Tegan - do you begin to see the nature of our problem here?" 

"You're saying we'd be changing history," Nyssa concluded bleakly, feeling a terrible weight descend on her mind at the thought of the Janovians struggling in their hopeless cause, a history already written and set out unchangeable. He was right; they couldn't help them. 

Tegan did not give up so easily. "But we've interfered before. What if they're right when they say we can give them a future? How can we deny them that?" Nyssa guessed she had no real desire to hang around and help, but the dilemma would weigh on her conscience all the same. 

The Doctor rubbed at his eyes. "Tegan, you have to understand, they have no future. They're already a dead race. Millions of years dead and gone, and what's more half the universe knows it. You can't set out to change that. If we tried we'd probably fail, and if we did succeed it might create a temporal paradox that could tear the universe apart. This planet is destined to become a part of the Karalian Union. It happens, it will happen, it already happened a very long time ago and there is absolutely nothing we can do to _stop_ it happening!" 

* * *

**Chapter 4**

There was a silence in the room following the Doctor's words that it seemed neither Tegan or Nyssa wanted to break. He looked from one to the other, aware that they were both caring and compassionate in their own ways, and it was hard for them to accept there was nothing to be done. He had enough trouble accepting it himself, but you couldn't argue with history. 

"So we can't help them," Nyssa said eventually, resignedly, infinities of sadness echoing in her voice. But she accepted it, as he'd known she would. It wasn't her reaction he was worried about. 

"What I'd like to know," Tegan hissed, half whispering as if she expected the Janovians to overhear, sounding stressed, guilty and irritated, "Is how we're going to tell them that! I don't trust them one bit. And there's something very strange about that Verani. The way she spoke, and the way the other Janovians looked at her. Like she was some kind of mystic." Her voice caught on the last word as though she wasn't quite sure it was the term she was searching for. 

"Oh, but she is." The Doctor barely realised he'd spoken aloud until both his companions turned puzzled stares upon him. He coughed uncomfortably. "She had heard of Gallifrey and the Cybermen," he said by way of explanation, unwilling to voice his speculations much further. 

"So?" Tegan asked. 

"So, this is the dawn of history," Nyssa murmured. 

"Exactly." He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. "So how do you remember something that doesn't exist yet?" 

"You don't expect us to believe she really is psychic? Some sort of... of seer?" Tegan's outburst of scepticism ended on a disbelieving snort. 

"Oh, but I do. But don't worry; there's sure to be a rational explanation for it. In fact, that's rather what I'm afraid of." He frowned and fell into silence. Genuine magic would be a very comforting alternative to the suspicions dragging at his mind. 

* * *

Random images collided at the edges of her thoughts, bursts of knowledge rather than vision, as though in her moments of insight she recovered memories and accessed parts of her mind previously lost. Usually it wasn't difficult to shield them out, and she would chose, when she wanted to, to allow the visions access to her conscious mind. But in recent days the kaleidoscope of thought-images was intrusive, demanding attention mid-sentence, battering upon and then breaking down her mental doors if she attempted to refuse them. Verani suspected that, given time, it would eventually drive her mad. Except time was the very thing they were running out of. 

The future was catching up with them. It was a clawed beast ready to pounce, and its name was extinction, genocide, death. 

She had seen it. In her head, it had happened already, played out in an unfolding drama a thousand times to torment her in her sleep, or even waking these past weeks. It was the future, the past and the present. Sometimes, alone, she would claw at her head, wishing for the physical strength and mental resolve to twist her fingers deep into her brain and cut off the visions for good. 

You couldn't live like that, sure of no future. And she had responsibilities to her people, who couldn't see it and didn't know. She was their eyes, the only one of them capable of fighting the beast. Their only choice of a champion. So she denied the things she had seen; she would change the unchangeable. She would defy the future - you couldn't live, sure of the hour of your own death. 

Verani knew the strangers wouldn't help. The man was in charge and she had caught brief glimpses into his mind. He knew the future as she did, but unlike her he was determined to let it run its course. She recognised him as an ancestor, and the voices in her head had replaced the label with another one. Time Lord. A name new to her but, as always, familiar just the same. 

The Time Lord wasn't involved as she was. He didn't understand. She'd decided to help him understand. When there was no choice, when he faced the same fate they did, her path would become clear to him. 

Verani had told Bannot and Crivthen that the Doctor would help, and she'd left them waiting for the strangers to finish their private discussion. They did not suspect the means by which she intended to achieve this end. They had an innocence unviolated by future-knowledge. It was inconceivable to them that a Janovian should be capable of the lengths she had prepared herself to go to if necessary. It was why they would not be able to prevent her. 

She searched around her improvised workroom, assembling bottles and jars on the worktable in its centre. Aware she did not have long to complete her task. Opening the doors in her mind and letting the voices lead her through what she had to do. Assembling death and pain and salvation. Despising herself more with every action she committed towards her purpose. 

* * *

"I don't think Verani is going to stand by and let us walk away. Whatever she might be." Nyssa crossed to the door and stood with her ear to it, listening for the Janovians' return. 

"Yes." The Doctor absently rubbed his aching arm, remembering the extraordinary strength behind that grip. The other Janovians might abhor violence but Verani was clearly prepared to sacrifice such scruples on the altar of expediency. She differed from the others in more ways than just her apparent psychic traits. He wondered if the difference might be brought about by the stress of living with those unusual abilities. A twinge of pain like a needle boring through the centre of his forehead distracted him momentarily. He squeezed shut his eyes and pressed the heels of his hands over them, blanking out the rest of the world in an attempt to focus on the cause. Definitely some minor temporal disturbance going on. Surely it couldn't be a consequence of their own presence on Janovay? No. Mere random fluctuations, it had to be. 

"Are you sure you're all right?" A perplexed Australian voice broke through his concentration. The Doctor parted his hands, peered down through the gap. Tegan's face stared up at him with concern. "Doctor?" 

He assembled an expression he hoped resembled a smile. "Just a minor twinge of the local temporal field. Probably quite harmless." 

She nodded slowly. "Just to make it absolutely clear," she said, with a careful precision, "I really don't want to be trapped on this God-forsaken planet in the path of an invasion by maniac cyborgs. So don't let anything happen to you, all right?" Something in her voice told him it wasn't herself she was chiefly concerned about. 

Feeling strangely lost for words in the face of her sentiment, the Doctor fumbled for a moment, then rested a hand on her shoulder in tentative reassurance. "Not to worry, Tegan," he said vaguely. "Now, where was I?" He glanced around the room, searching for inspiration. 

"First Councillor Verani," Nyssa prompted. 

"Ah. Yes. Well. We'll just have to humour her for a while. Play along, until we have a chance to slip away undetected. It should be possible, though I'd rather we didn't have to put up a pretence...." 

"Never mind about that," Tegan said. "Do you think it will work?" 

"Maybe. It certainly seems to be our best option." He sighed and stared down at the tiles on the floor, and found himself wondering yet again if there wasn't any way at all to help the Janovians. If only their story was not so well known. They didn't deserve to die like that, slaughtered by an enemy more merciless than the Cybermen. Not that anybody did. But the Doctor could not afford to get involved. Neither could he risk involving Nyssa and Tegan, not with sadistic invaders only days away. 

His thoughts were interrupted by Nyssa, at the door, who announced with nervous urgency, "I think they're coming back!" 

* * *

Verani was barely aware of the presence of Bannot and Crivthen at her heels as she walked back into the council chamber. She felt her own guilt draped around her shoulders like a cloak. The ever-present murmur of other people's thoughts at the edges of her mind had become more like a clawing than its usual undemanding itch. They were trying to get inside her head, to push her own personality into the background. It was getting worse. She thought it would continue to get worse, the nearer they came to the hour of destruction. When she walked through the doorway and set her eyes upon the Time Lord, she almost drowned in his thoughts. 

Worry. Concern for the safety of his companions. A need to get them away from the action. Inability to act. Impossible to alter the set course of history. Too much this time. Confusion. Awareness. He'd realised she could read him. A sudden slamming down of mental barriers and then a blissful quiet. 

Crivthen caught her arm as she stumbled, coming back into awareness of her own mind and body. She murmured thanks but did not look at him. The Time Lord had not flinched, had merely developed a puzzled expression that was both deeply unhappy and slightly comic. He looked ridiculously young for someone with centuries of life behind him. He had his hands in the pockets of his striped trousers and was waiting, uneasily, for her to speak first. 

The girl called Nyssa spoke instead, and Verani was surprised that the Time Lord would permit the girl to speak for him, but rather then overrule her he looked grateful. 

"We've decided to listen to what you have to say. We can't know for sure whether we can do anything to help you without knowing more about what is happening here." 

It was a logical answer, a sensible decision, but Verani knew it for a lie. The Time Lord had already decided they were beyond saving. They were playing for time; playing into her hands. "I am gratified you are willing to give the matter more thought. If the two of you would like to accompany councillors Crivthen and Bannot, who will show you our operation-" she indicated the two young women, then turned to the Time Lord who called himself the Doctor. "And I should like very much to speak with you, if you would permit it? Ah, we can rejoin the others shortly." 

The Time Lord looked first to his companions. It was they he worried about. The other girl, Tegan, said, "We'll be all right, Doctor," and Nyssa nodded firm agreement. 

The Doctor smiled broadly; a sham. "Why not?" 

* * *

"Are you sure this is a blind spot?" Luthen hissed as they half-ran, half-crept down the slope of the valley to the city. 

"Yes!" snapped Jovanka. She was trying to keep to some invisible line, constantly looking up at the tower dominating the city's skyline. At the same time she kept glancing back to make sure Luthen was following the exact same path. "I've been in that tower, and I know! You can't see that funny shaped mountain peak over there." She waved a hand limply in the direction of backwards. 

Jovanka's movements were a parody of a military stance that might in other circumstances have been amusing. Every so often her shoes betrayed her and she narrowly avoided landing flat on her face in the mud. The first few times it had reddened her cheeks with embarrassment, but now it simply amplified her cross expression ever more. 

They had circled the valley to find what Jovanka swore was a blind spot in the city's lookout system. Except it wasn't actually, she had admitted in one of her moments of loquaciousness, because if you leaned out far enough you could see it anyway, but Luthen agreed with her that it was their best option. 

At their running - or more accurately, slipping and sliding - pace, it wasn't too long before they leaned against the city's outer walls, gasping for breath. He was miserably aware of the heat of the suns, which was building up to unbearable as the day dragged on, and was also aware of the need for water. He couldn't remember when he'd last had a drink or, for that matter, anything to eat. His companion was worse off, and as he studied her he noticed the transparent effect was once again beginning to take hold of her features. 

"Jovanka...." 

"I know!" she replied grimly. "The time in the TARDIS gave me the rest I needed to last a little longer, but I still don't have much time. We have to hurry." She turned and took a few steps backwards, gazing up at the wall. "So do something useful, and give me a leg-up." 

"You want to climb over?" 

"I want to see what's on the other side. Then I'll know whether we can climb over. I thought you were supposed to have had training?" Her voice was habitually rather than deliberately irritated, and she placed a muddy shoe on Luthen's offered hand and used the wall's support to climb onto his shoulders. She weighed astonishingly little. 

"I was trained to do what I was ordered," he retorted. "What can you see?" 

"Rooftops. There's a house right on the other side. If we climb over, I doubt we'll be noticed. People don't tend to walk around looking up. And if you ask me that's bloody useless training. What happened to initiative and thinking for yourselves?" 

"I didn't ask you, actually," Luthen said, as he felt her weight leave his shoulders. He looked up to see her flailing legs as she toppled inelegantly across the top of the wall, disappearing over the other side. "Jovanka? Are you all right?" 

"Of course I am." A moment later her head reappeared and she threw down a length of cloth. "Climb up, quickly! I've anchored the other arm this side, I hope it'll hold your weight." 

The remark drew his attention to the fact the cloth was the top half of her green suit, and he felt his face redden. But how else was he going to climb over the wall? He gripped the end of the garment. The fabric was thick and strong - she must have been cooking inside it, in the sun - but with his extra weight of cybernetics he wasn't sure it would hold. He scrambled up, hearing ripping just before he grabbed the top of the wall. Jovanka took hold of his arm and helped him over. He landed on a flat rooftop a few feet below the top of the wall, and looked away from her semi-covered form. She was wearing a white vest that didn't leave much concealed. 

"Don't be so wet," she said as she untied the arm of the garment from a drainage pipe and pulled it back on. One of the arms was now half ripped off at the shoulder. "It's not as if you haven't seen skin before." 

Luthen ignored the amusement in her voice. He found very little amusing about their situation. "What are you going to do now?" he asked, watching her crawl to the edge of the roof and peer down. 

Her expression was apprehensive despite the confidence in her words. "Well, if we're going to get inside their council building, we'll need to at least look the part. I wonder if whoever owns this house has any spare clothes, because they don't appear to have a door, let alone a lock. Too good an invitation to refuse, really, to not take them up on it..." 

* * *

The Doctor frowned as he watched the door close behind Tegan and Nyssa. He hoped he was right in his assessment of the two Councillors as essentially benign. 

Only seconds after closing, the door opened again to admit a silent Janovian menial who inclined her head to Verani and handed over a tray with a jug and two glasses on it, then departed. 

The Doctor waited calmly, hands in pockets, while Verani crossed to the table, placed the tray down on it, and pulled two chairs closer to the table and each other at a friendly conversational distance. She sat down in the chair Tegan had recently vacated and gestured to the other one, which still had the Doctor's jacket and hat draped over the arm. "Please, be seated." She poured out two drinks, and he realised that one of the factors contributing to the aura of strangeness around the First Councillor was the way her straightforward, inelegant body-language contrasted with the formality of her speech. 

The Doctor moved his jacket and hat to the floor and sat down. He didn't trust Verani, but that was no excuse for bad manners. He took the offered glass from her hand. "Most civilised." 

"My thanks. I hope you will forgive me my hasty action earlier. I acted without thinking. The future of my people weighs on my mind." 

"Yes, I imagine it does," the Doctor murmured absently. He glanced at Verani's face, and something in her expression tore through all pretence of deception. "You've seen it, haven't you?" he asked quietly. 

Verani nodded, the motion curling her red hair up around her face like snakes ready to strike. Her eyes were dangerous. She had, he remembered, nothing to lose. 

The Doctor leaned forward, fascination overriding caution, and gently touched her wrist. "What exactly do you see?" Her expression didn't change, but her gaze seemed to bore through the centre of his forehead into his brain. 

"Everything." Her voice was more like a rasp, her gaze suddenly trance-like. 

He recalled how, earlier, he had felt a presence in his mind. He tried to pull down mental barriers carefully this time, closing her out more gently than before. He suspected it wasn't something she could control, and he didn't want to harm her. 

"You obviously have a very advanced psychic ability," he remarked, letting go of her wrist and leaning back in the chair, stunned by the weight of this new discovery. And what it meant. "So you know, then, what I am?" 

"I know." 

"Ah... this is rather awkward," he said, massaging his forehead with the heels of his hands, trying to think. "And you know, then, that I can't possibly help you?" 

She smiled. The expression had a falseness to it. "I know that is what you believe. I am still hoping you will reconsider." 

"If you've seen the future you must know that I can't!" the Doctor exclaimed. "You can't alter what's already happened. You shouldn't know what the future is. It shouldn't be possible and it's a disastrous, tragic twist of fate, but you must understand, there is nothing you can do. The fact you have seen it means it will happen - has happened." It sounded pathetic even to himself, fragile conjecture weighted against the lives on Janovay that were definitely at stake, the deaths Verani's vision piled upon her mind. 

"You want me to do nothing in the face of my people's extermination. What you ask is impossible. I have to try." 

"You'll fail," he said, so quiet he was barely whispering. "It's already happened." 

"That's why I need you to help me." Verani was almost pleading now. She averted her eyes from the reply in his, and picked up her glass and slowly sipped at it. 

* * *

"We'll visit the centre of our operations last," Crivthen had said, "To give Verani and your friend the Doctor chance to catch up. That is, if you'd like a look around the rest of the building?" His old eyes smiled as he spoke. Nyssa had to admit, she liked him - and of course had agreed to his suggestion. Even Tegan seemed to have calmed down now they were away from Verani. Bannot and Crivthen were not remotely threatening. 

Nyssa worried briefly about leaving the Doctor alone with the First Councillor, but she didn't think Verani posed a direct threat, and the Doctor should be able to deal with any trouble besides, so she put the matter from her mind. 

"This is all very impressive," she commented as they entered another high, spacious hallway. At first glance it had a peaceful simplicity, but she knew there was nothing simple about the mathematics that had gone into calculating the optimum dimensions to generate such tranquillity. "I wonder - could you tell me how your people managed to build this place so it looks so much more compact from the outside?" 

Crivthen smiled. "I'm afraid Verani may be the only person who could answer your question. All the structures of the city were built by the ancestors, many centuries ago. The knowledge, as with much of the ancestors' methods and wisdom, is lost to us now." 

"Except of course through Verani's Seeing," Bannot added, in somewhat indifferent tones, as if by rote. They turned a corner, heading for a flight of stairs. Nyssa craned her neck to look up a staircase that seemed to wind into infinity. "It is the first time our Seer and our First Councillor have been one and the same." 

"Your Seer?" she repeated lightly. 

"Yes," Crivthen said. "It is a hereditary role. Verani's bloodline. One in each generation. A position of authority in itself. But Verani also chose to offer herself for the role of First Councillor and the people affirmed her suitability." 

"That's fascinating," Nyssa said. 

"So how long ago was that? Verani becoming First Councillor, that is." Tegan asked, distracted, her neck craned upwards as she climbed the spiralling staircase. 

After a moment, Crivthen replied, "Twenty-three years." He looked slightly wondrous as though he hadn't realised it had been quite that long. 

"Must have started young, then," said Tegan, impressed. 

Nyssa did a quick calculation and said softly, "Actually, the Janovian year is a lot longer than Earth's. In your terms, Tegan, that would make the figure close to three hundred years." 

Tegan's lips moved soundlessly for a moment. "Crikey," she said. 

* * *

"Please, Verani, you have to believe me." The Doctor clasped his hands together, leaned across the table towards her once again. "If there was something I could do to save your people I would do it, but it isn't possible. It's already happened." His eyes bled pity, and she didn't need the thoughts he now shielded from her mind to know that he was telling the truth... so far as he saw it. 

She steeled her will, striving to suppress the sudden surge of remorse that gripped her hearts. There was more at stake here than the life of a stranger, however innocent and sincere he might be. Angrily, she raised her glass and swallowed half its contents. 

It didn't help her own situation, or her aggrieved conscience, to see how much it hurt the Doctor to turn his back on them. She noticed her hand gripped the glass so hard her fingers were white, and forced herself to relax. "Nothing is irredeemable," she said, and only realised afterwards that her voice had diminished into a whisper. 

"Perhaps that's true." A moment's doubt, a flood of desperation - his mental barriers were slipping. She watched as the Doctor stood and paced the floor, distracted and preoccupied. Then he spun around and continued, addressing her directly and with a certainty slightly marred by the way his voice had broken into a higher pitch. He punctuated his speech by stabbing the air with a pointed finger. "It's absolutely out of the question! You can't play games with the web of time - you can't take those kinds of risks. I suspect there's already been enough temporal meddling over this planet without adding more to the mess. Can't you see what the consequences could be? How drastically an attempt to change things here could affect the universe? I can't help you, Verani, I'm sorry. I may have interfered before but there is a limit and this is it. I do have some responsibilities!" 

Verani watched his performance, searching for the strength to remain impassive. A confused jumble was all she received from his mind now. A large mind, disordered and cluttered eccentrically with items superfluous to function, filed in no logical order, scattered remnants of former personalities doing nothing to help the confusion. Few of his thoughts were visible to her, but she didn't even have to try to sense his emotions. He wasn't sure he was making the moral decision, although he desperately wanted to do the right thing. 

How very much they were alike. 

The Doctor moved to sit down again, changed his mind and remained standing, but picked up his drink from the table. Verani quietly drank the last of her own. She was moving to pour herself some more when he spoke again, distracting her attention. 

"I know you hoped to persuade me to help you if we talked alone. It hasn't worked because nothing could. The possible consequences of altering your future - our history - are worse than that history itself. I can't do it. So let's rejoin the others and explain that this is the way things have to be." His eyes pleaded for her to understand. He was expecting her to react. He drained his drink and placed the empty glass down carefully on the table, collecting his hat and jacket from the floor. He crossed over to the door and held it open for her hesitantly. 

"All right." Verani sighed, seeing her options before her solidified into one pattern as she led the way through the door and down the corridor. 

* * *

As Nyssa was beginning to think her legs would give way if she couldn't stop to rest soon, they ascended the final spiral and arrived at the top of the staircase. She leaned on the railing, looking back down the twisting stairs, not quite believing the distance they seemed to stretch below. 

Neither Bannot or the more aged Crivthen were out of breath from the climb. That and Verani's reported age would suggest the Janovians were an unusually hardy race. Nyssa was comforted by the more human reaction of Tegan who, after crawling up the last of the steps, sprawled flat-out on the floor to catch her breath, staring blankly at the ceiling. 

Nyssa studied the tower-room with interest. It was a perfect circle, with windows stretching around the length of its walls. There was no glass in them, but the Janovian climate made the room anything but the windy, exposed position that might have been expected. It was warm and lit by a flood of sunlight through its many windows. A Janovian man they hadn't met before stood gazing out, unconcerned by their presence. 

Tegan climbed to her feet and the two councillors, who had been waiting for them both to recover, returned to life. 

"The city's watch-tower," Bannot said, with an indicative wave of one hand. As his gaze panned around the vista of Janovay's landscape, his face broke into a smile. It was the first time Nyssa had seen his expression change. 

She understood perfectly. The view was very beautiful. "You can see for miles. Look, Tegan-" As she turned to her friend, she saw the Australian wasn't paying attention to the windows; she was still staring upwards. Nyssa followed her gaze to the ceiling and blinked in a foolish, blank astonishment that she imagined was very similar to Tegan's. 

The ceiling was a transparent circular disc of an unfamiliar material of quite extraordinary properties. It brought the stars in the sky above them into sharp focus despite the day, lit by the sunlight that poured in from the windows below. It occurred to Nyssa that perhaps this had been the point, and the tower had never been built to watch for any terrestrial threat. After all, didn't the Janovian city contain the only higher life forms on the planet? 

It was also beautiful, a shimmering array of colours, intermingled clouds and stars. And although she couldn't see the substance close enough to guess at how it worked, she knew it must have taken a very highly advanced technology to create it. Which reminded her of a crucial question the Janovians hadn't yet explained. "Why did your people bury your technology?" 

It took her a moment to realise she'd said it aloud. 

Crivthen smiled amiably and shook his head. Much as she liked him, she couldn't help wondering if his friendly, bluff manner was just a facade. "It is no longer remembered. All that we are sure of is that it is forbidden." A shadow crossed his face, perhaps at the thought of their current transgressions of that rule. "It is possible that Verani might know." 

Nyssa frowned in frustration. That was a reply she was growing tired of hearing. It seemed to be the reply they gave to all the interesting questions. She was beginning to wonder if Verani was the only person on the planet who knew anything. 

She leaned over the stairwell, thinking she could hear voices rising from it. Someone was climbing up, too far below yet for her to tell whether it was the Doctor and Verani. 

Nyssa cast another speculative glance up to the cloudy starscape, then switched her attention back to the comfortingly rural landscape outside the windows. She could see the TARDIS, if she looked carefully, a pinhead sized shadow of darker blue on the grassy slopes. 

* * *

"We're lost." Jovanka glared accusingly. 

Luthen, who had suspected this for some time, said, "Well don't look at me. You're the one who's supposed to have been here before. Although I can't say I blame you. This place is nothing but corridors. And it didn't look anywhere near this big from the outside." They stopped at another junction of passages. Both routes looked exactly the same. No defining features whatsoever. Luthen put his flesh hand to his aching head and groaned. 

They were both wearing white Janovian robes, and Luthen felt ridiculous. He didn't look anything like one of these people. As they'd made their way through the city he'd been convinced all the natives they'd walked past had known he wasn't one of them. He was sure the bulky cybernetic limbs were blatantly obvious under the robe. And Jovanka could never pass for one of the serene Janovians, at least not unless she was either asleep or heavily drugged. 

"This way." She chose a direction at random. After a few steps, she spun around and went the other way instead. She crossed to the nearest door, opened it a crack and peered through into the room beyond. She waved for him to follow and disappeared into the room. 

Luthen hurried after. "What are you doing? You're going to get us both caught, taking risks like that." 

She'd gone straight to the window, where she stood looking out. "I'm finding out what side of the building we're on; looking to see what's outside," she said. "So I can work out where we go from here. Think I've got it. Come on." She led the way back into the corridors. 

* * *

"The architecture of this place really is remarkable," the Doctor said, gazing up as they ascended the watch-tower staircase. He immersed himself in studying the mathematical detail of the surroundings, trying to put from his mind the guilt of abandoning the Janovians to their fate. 

His remark was met by silence from Verani, and when he glanced back he saw she was several steps behind. He stopped and leaned against the handrail, waiting for her to catch up, noticing how her limbs seemed to drag as she climbed. Weighted, perhaps, by despair. He felt annoyed at his own insensitivity. Considering Verani's present situation the last thing she needed to hear was his appraisal of the architecture. 

"Are you all right?" he asked. Her face was paler than it ought to be, her breathing ragged. 

She raised her head with an odd touch of defiance, her eyes looking straight through him, focusing somewhere a few metres beyond infinity. "Of course I am," she said, her voice colourless and dead. 

* * *

"Along here," said Jovanka. "Yes, I think this is it. Crivthen's rooms are near the council chamber where we first met them all... He ought to be going back to them shortly. We can probably wait inside." 

"Are you sure we can trust this man? And even if we can trust him, how can he help us?" 

"I don't know. I'll think of something. At the moment he seems our best bet. We can't change what's already happened, you see - and talking to the Doctor or Nyssa, or even Verani, would do that. I didn't see Crivthen again after this point, so he was out of the way, doing something else. Maybe helping me!" 

Luthen nodded wisely, pretending he understood what she was getting at. 

"And stop bloody nodding when you've no idea what it is I'm saying," she snapped. 

Oh, well. He found himself grinning at her. And was surprised when she grinned back. 

"On the other hand," she added. "Keep up the good work. It makes a nice change for someone to agree with everything I say. I could get used to this." 

* * *

The Doctor leaned heavily on the handrail, staring down. The depths below seemed to rotate giddily, and he scrunched shut his eyes. He'd never liked heights much this incarnation, but this felt different. He opened his eyes again, shook his head to clear it and managed to focus. He took a deep breath and moved away from the edge, turning to Verani, who was sitting a few steps further up. She looked grey. 

"Feeling any better now?" he asked. 

She shook her head but stood up anyway, and would have continued. The Doctor, about to protest, heard the sound of voices from above. Obviously Tegan, Nyssa and the others had tired of waiting and had decided to walk down to meet them. And, he had to admit, he was glad, not only for Verani's sake. He was beginning to feel decidedly strange. 

"No need," he said to Verani, bounding up the steps in a brief burst of energy to catch her arm before she went any further. "We'll wait for them here." He helped her to sit down again. She obviously wasn't well. Not really surprising, the stress she was under. He thought guiltily that it was probably his fault. 

* * *

"It's somewhere on this corridor," Jovanka announced, stopping and placing her hands on her hips in a curiously aggressive gesture. "I'm sure it is." 

"Try a door?" Luthen said, and shrugged, as she looked to him for inspiration. 

She returned the shrug and crossed the corridor to the closest door. After contemplating it for a moment, she shoved it open and walked in. He followed her more cautiously. 

They found themselves in some kind of lab or work room. The first thing Luthen noticed, which Jovanka apparently hadn't, was the alien working over in the far corner, half obscured behind a bench heaped with technical equipment. The surrounding room, with its clutter of gadgetry far in advance of what he'd previously seen of Janovian society, was of secondary importance. 

"Jovanka..." he began worriedly as the alien looked up and saw them. It was a reptilian Mirosan, humanoid but hairless, covered in scaly skin that varied in shade from pale beige to dark brown. It was wearing oddly bright-coloured clothes, like some sort of vagabond spacer. He recognised the species because his people were currently occupying their home planet. 

The Mirosan wasn't fooled by the Janovian robe. It took one look at Luthen and reached for the energy weapon at its belt. Luthen, knowing he wasn't going to be fast enough, did the same. 

"Oh, for crying out loud!" A strident voice interrupted the proceedings. Jovanka had seen what was going on and blindly flung herself between them. "Can we just wait one bloody moment before we all start shooting each other?!" Her last word came out as a gasp, as the Mirosan fired. 

Ignoring the burn of a shot glancing inches from his hip, Luthen staggered, struggling to hold her weight as she fell back against him. The gun fell from his hand. He could see a charred hole in her clothing and didn't want to think about what kind of state her flesh was in underneath. Unable to support her, he fell backwards to the floor and she sprawled across him. He struggled to free his arms, attempted to staunch the bleeding, but knew it wasn't enough. Her head lolled to one side as he slid an arm around her shoulders. Her eyes flickered down to her injury and widened. 

"Rabbits," said Tegan Jovanka. 

Luthen saw the life leave her eyes. "No, please!" he said frantically, panicking. She couldn't leave him alone here, on an alien world. "Please. You can't die..." 

She wasn't listening any more. He watched the transparent effect creep across her dead form, increasing, swallowing her up until she was no longer there. As though she had never existed. 

"Don't move, Karalian." 

Luthen looked up at the armed Mirosan standing over him. 

* * *

Tegan clattered down the spiral stairs to join them ahead of the others. "That tower room's amazing!" she announced, not realising something was wrong. The Doctor glanced up at her from where he stood worriedly over Verani, then had to snatch at the handrail as a sudden weakness gripped him. He stared down at his hands, then back up at Tegan. 

"Verani..." He relaxed his grip and slid down onto the steps beside her. Her head lolled and she didn't move at the sound of her name. He grabbed her arms and shook her, not quite as gently as he'd intended. "Verani! What have you done? It was that drink, wasn't it? What was it? What have you done to us?" 

Tegan, and the others who had caught up now and halted just behind her, watched stunned. Only Crivthen moved, with a speed giving lie to his aged appearance, to kneel down behind the First Councillor and grasp her shoulder. "Verani, what have you done?" he groaned. 

"Saved us," she said, sickly. "I'm going to save us all." 

"By poisoning our visitor and yourself?" 

"Addictive poison..." she said. "It's all right. I'll be all right. It's just the initial shock; the poison taking hold. It will clear up soon. Remember... zayol flowers... unique to Janovay... initial planetary survey results." The Doctor realised she was once again relating information in her trance-like state. Then she managed to raise her head and look straight at him. "You'll help us, won't you? You see, if you don't - if you leave - you'll die, and in beings such as ourselves, Doctor, the poison not only kills, but destroys the entire regenerative process." 

_End of Part 1_


	2. Temporal Devices

DISCLAIMER: All Doctor Who characters and concepts belong to the BBC. The ones you don't recognise are mine. Especially Verani. No profit, just borrowing, yadda, yadda, yadda. 

* * *

**

Doctor Who: Janovay

**

_Part 2. Temporal Devices_

Chapter 5 

She tapped on the door quietly before opening it a crack and peeping through into the room. 

It was darkening inside, and Nyssa had to blink several times before her eyes grew accustomed to it after the light in the corridor. The Doctor had dragged a chair across to the room's single large window and now slumped, watching the Janovian sky fill with colours as the second of the suns set. He turned his head wearily, saw her there, managed a brief smile. Placed a finger against his lips and beckoned her into the room. 

As she closed the door she saw the reason for his silence. Tegan, who had stayed behind to watch over him while Nyssa snatched a few hours of sleep, was herself lying peacefully dozing, cradled across the arms of a sizeable chair, her legs hanging down over one side and her head lolled back over the other. 

Nyssa crept across to the Doctor and sat down on the low windowsill near his feet. The orange of the dying sunlight was blazing through the window to illuminate them both, its glow pooling throughout the near half of the room, stopping just short of Tegan's sleeping form in the far corner where shadows crouched out of its reach. For long minutes neither of them spoke, both contemplating the cityscape stretched out below. The white of the buildings had taken on the colours of the sky. Nyssa was grateful to be reminded of how beautiful the universe could be. 

Eventually, she turned her back on the window and studied the Doctor. The grey cast had vanished from his skin and he looked considerably better, but exhaustion dragged at his voice when he remarked, attempting flippancy, "At least we can't complain about the accommodation, eh, Nyssa?" 

Still, this time it was 'Nyssa' and not 'Romana', 'Zoe', or even 'K9'. As Verani had promised, the initial disorienting effect of the toxin was settling down. Soon he should be almost back to normal. Except that he'd die, irrevocably, without regular doses of the toxin. 

"How are you feeling, Doctor?" she whispered. 

"I've been better. But then I've also been worse, so I suppose things aren't so bad." He stretched his mouth into a grin, but it looked as though it was an effort. "Chin up. We'll think of something." 

Nyssa nodded, searching for appropriate words to reply and finding none. She turned back to the window, nibbling at her bottom lip. Bands of darkness were beginning to fray the edges of the sky. 

"Two hours," said the Doctor, absently. 

She waited for an explanation. 

"Night on Janovay," he clarified, straightening in his chair. "It only lasts for just less than two hours. Then the other sun rises again." 

"It's beautiful." 

"Yes." He sighed and leaned forward, clasping his hands together, fingers interlaced. "Nyssa, I want you and Tegan to escape from here if you get the opportunity. I'll try to give you that opportunity, make a distraction somehow... I can't leave, but you don't have to stay. I don't want you to be here when the invasion force arrives." 

She'd expected something like this, but she was still a little angry with him, despite knowing he was only concerned for her and Tegan's safety. "No, Doctor," she said firmly. 

His sigh told her he hadn't expected it to be easy persuading them to go. "I know you don't want to," he said, irritation creeping into his voice, "But this time things may not work out. Certainly at the moment they don't look very good. I can give you detailed instructions to work the TARDIS. It's risky, but at least it would give you and Tegan a chance to go home..." He trailed off, realising what he was saying, and shook his head. "I'm so sorry, Nyssa. Mind's wandering." 

"It's all right, Doctor. But I'm not going to leave. I'll take Tegan back, if I can, if I get the chance and if that is what she wants, but if I do then it will be with the intention of returning." 

"There's nothing you can do." 

"Perhaps. Perhaps not." She was touched by his sentiment but despaired at his stubborn annoyance. How could she possibly explain to him that while Traken might be destroyed, he had provided her with a new home. With the TARDIS, with him. "Please let's not argue about this," she said, choking back a sob. "I don't have anywhere else I'd want to go." 

"All right." He smiled sadly and reached out and patted her shoulder. "It's all right." 

"Anyway," she added, hurriedly blinking back her tears. "It may not come to that. Perhaps we'll all find a way out together." She didn't know if she really believed it herself. She studied his face, noticing how the poison had cut lines of illness and exhaustion into his apparently youthful features. "Shouldn't you be getting some sleep yourself?" 

"In a little while, when it's dark. A few hours should be enough." 

Outside the window, the sunset was reduced to a mere strip over the horizon, the rest of the sky darkened. Shadows had collected in the streets of the city, but the orange light still reflected on the flat rooftops. 

"Verani's a Time Lord, isn't she?" Nyssa asked, not sure how he'd take the question, but she had to know if that was what concerned him so much about these people. 

The Doctor looked stricken. "She is no such thing," he said, too quickly and too loudly, forgetting that Tegan was asleep. He added, with reluctance, and rather quieter after a concerned glance towards Tegan's chair, "She is something very similar. Too similar for it to be coincidental. But also quite different. I suspect that goes for all the Janovians." 

"But how? And what do you mean, 'too similar to be coincidental'?" 

"I wish I knew that myself." He flopped back in the chair as if he lacked the energy to sit up straight any longer. "I suspect, though, that someone's been tinkering with their genetic make-up at some point. Especially Verani's." 

"In this era?" 

"We're here," he reasoned cryptically, his gaze fixed somewhere over in the twilight beyond the window. "Did you manage to get any sleep?" 

"Not much. Enough." She realised he was almost certainly changing the subject on purpose, but gave in out of consideration for his fragile state, which she thought probably more fragile than he cared to admit. "Don't forget, I'm not a human." She glanced across at Tegan, who was breathing heavily in her sleep. The position she slept in, sprawled across the seat and both arms of the chair, didn't look overly comfortable. It was only just possible to see the Earth woman's shape now in the darkness. 

"I wonder how Verani is," the Doctor mused. "I never imagined she'd be so driven as to do something like this. Poisoning herself as well... I wouldn't have touched the drink unless she had. She knew that. She sacrificed herself." 

His guilty sadness told Nyssa that, ridiculously, he felt responsible. She had to remind herself that this depth of compassion was what defined him, and she should have stopped feeling surprised by it. "She chose to do it," she said, harsher than she'd intended. "She had an option." 

"Hmm." 

It was almost totally dark now. Nyssa realised it was going to be a thorough darkness, because Janovay did not have a moon. They would have only the natural light provided by the stars. She remembered the primitive lamp set on the table next to the bed, and decided she had better light it before it became completely dark. As she moved to do so, she heard the Doctor get up behind her. She turned to see his shadowed form cross the few metres to the bed, walking like someone who'd already walked fifty miles, and collapse sprawled on top of the covers. 

"Doctor?" Nyssa asked. He didn't reply. He'd fallen asleep instantly. She left the lamp as it was and crept back across the dark room to the newly-vacated chair in the window. 

She sat down to gaze out and watch the night. 

* * *

"You aren't fooling me, you know," said the Mirosan, whose name Luthen thought he'd heard as Kweril. The statement was a brief respite from the tirade of unanswerable questions and the impact of scaly fists. 

While Kweril was breathing heavily from exertion, Luthen was hardly breathing at all, in small, controlled breaths. Pain was no stranger, and he'd suffered worse than this in 'friendly' practise bouts on-board the _Vardito_, led by instructors who considered a thrashing in front of his unit would give him the motivation to fight better. 

It didn't teach him to fight, and he didn't need it to teach him resilience. 

"I know how your kind operate," Kweril said. "I know there're more of you out there somewhere. Where are they? When will they attack?" 

"I'm alone," Luthen said, indistinct through his split and bleeding lips. 

He'd answered the same question several times now, and the mockery of an interrogation had become monotonous. He remembered the disabled ex-Captain who'd lectured them, how he'd said that other races knew nothing about pain, in comparison to the Karalian who lived with it intimately. 

He couldn't imagine Kweril getting bored any time soon. The experience of being able to beat one of the feared enemy into a bloody pulp was probably an attraction that would take rather longer to wear off. 

Luthen had resigned himself to being a dead man in the moment he'd raised his eyes from Jovanka's disappeared corpse and they'd looked down the barrel of the alien's gun. He'd waited for it, but Kweril hadn't killed him. 

A dead prisoner couldn't provide any useful information, after all - a pity he hadn't figured that out before shooting Jovanka. Luthen had been disarmed and dragged through corridors by the Mirosan and a couple of Janovians called in to help. He'd been deposited in a plain, sparsely furnished chamber which was probably meant to be a guest room despite looking like a cell. Ironically appropriate, now it was put to that function in truth. Kweril and his helpers had secured Luthen to what would otherwise have been a comfortable, functional chair. The Janovians had been sent away with the order to 'Go and fetch a Councillor. Any one will do.' 

They'd barely walked out the door before Kweril had begun laying into him. 

And no, the pain was nothing new and the helplessness, that was nothing new either, but Kweril's grinning face and ready fists twisted up something inside of him where long-overloaded, fused and deadened nerves reawoke in anguish, and made him want to crawl out of his skull to somewhere else - anywhere else. 

He wished that Jovanka hadn't had to die. 

He contemplated the limited-power micro energy-weapon built into his cybernetic arm, the face of the man he'd killed crippling his resolve. Tied as he was, and at this range, the blast would take out half of the short, bulky alien's torso. But shooting Kweril wouldn't free him, it would be a pointless gesture, another pointless death, what would it matter? 

Kweril got tired of waiting for an answer to another question Luthen hadn't heard and hit him again. He felt something break in his nose, and blood begin to trickle down his mouth and chin. He breathed carefully out of the corner of his mouth. 

Excited by the flow of blood, Kweril seemed to redouble his efforts, and Luthen desperately cast his mind back to the day he'd woken up to find the Syndrome active and clawing through every nerve in his doomed body, compared with which the present was really nothing, nothing at all. 

* * *

The sound of violence echoed out of the room into the corridor. It was hardly a sound Councillor Crivthen was accustomed to hearing, and it took him several seconds, standing outside, hearing it, to steel himself to push open the door and walk in. What he saw was not what he had expected to see. 

He'd been told of a Karalian intruder. He had not expected that the Karalian would be little more than a child, a youth with a thin, pale face, and scraggy hair growing untidily out of a cropped cut. Children were rare on Janovay, and therefore valued. The fact didn't seem to have made much difference to Kweril, who had secured the boy to a chair with a fairly ridiculous amount of rope, and had presumably inflicted the bruises marring his face. 

The Karalian... had his eyes closed, and his expression was blank, as though he suffered nothing at all. Yet he _was_ conscious. 

"Where are they?" Kweril asked, still unaware of Crivthen's presence at the door. One of the Mirosan's fists was raised ready to strike whatever answer the youth gave. 

"Nowhere," the Karalian replied tonelessly. "There's nobody else with me." 

"Enough!" Crivthen snapped, stopping Kweril before his hand fell again. "I will not have your brutality here! Too much has already happened this day, and I am already in mourning for the peace this planet has cherished for generations. You go too far, Kweril." 

He saw the Karalian open surprised eyes to stare at him. The eyes were quite normal, although Crivthen noticed, now he had opportunity to, that the youth's left hand was synthetic, but the Karalian still bore little resemblance to the monsters of his race's reputation. 

"Sir, they are lower then butchers of children," Kweril said, barely politely. "They decimated my planet. I have seen the results of their invasion, the horrors they committed." 

"That is no excuse for behaving like one of them," the councillor retorted edgily. He turned to the captive. "What is your name?" 

Eyes flickering nervously between his captors, evidently confused by this abrupt changing of the rules, the Karalian warily said, "Trooper Ryn Luthen, assigned to the battle ship _Vardito_. But I was separated from my ship, and as I've told this creature - persistently - I am now alone." 

There was bitterness in his voice. Crivthen told himself he was getting too old for this, and wondered why it had to be left to him to oversee it, rather than one of the others, both of whom would have been eminently more qualified. But Bannot had been assigned to looking after the other visitors and seeing that they did not foolishly try to leave, and Verani... well, it was best not to think about Verani. "I am Councillor Crivthen," he replied. "And my overeager friend is Kweril, a spacer from Miros II. A planet doomed by your people, as I'm sure you're aware. As such his violent actions are understandable, if reprehensible. However, I would still have you tell us the truth about what you are doing here, and when others are expected to arrive." 

Kweril snorted, and said with contempt, "The only way to get the truth is to beat it out of him. These creatures are liars and fiends, and asking them gently will achieve nothing." 

"That may be the case, but I would still prefer to do so first before proceeding with more drastic measures!" Crivthen snapped. "And if you would give the boy a chance to reply, perhaps we might learn something." 

"I _have_ told the truth," Luthen protested. "_Several_ times. I don't know anything except that my people are supposed to be here soon. I'm not sure how I got here, but I promise you I'm alone. I'd hardly be here in this state if I was part of an army!" 

The words had the ring of truth to them. About to question further, and wondering whether it would be wise to at least loosen the restraints holding the Karalian, he was distracted by the sound of somebody entering the room behind him. He turned to see Verani, looking haggard and ill but at least as though she knew where she was and understood what was happening around her. 

"I heard there was a Karalian," she remarked, leaning on the wall for support, overpowering weakness held at bay at the edge of her voice. "I came as quickly as I could." 

"Verani, you should not be here. You should be resting." 

The protest went unnoticed. Verani was staring at the Karalian, who'd straightened, startled, at the mention of her name. He knew she was seeing the same thing he had - a child, just a child, dressed up as a soldier. But there was steel in her eyes when she looked upon the captive. 

"He says his name is Ryn Luthen, madam, and that he is alone here," Kweril said nervously. Verani had the ability to unsettle, at times. 

"Good," she said softly. "Good." They were all staring at her, waiting for her to clarify her extraordinary remark. The Karalian had real fear in his eyes for the first time, and Crivthen wondered at his odd reactions. "This could be our chance, the chance we need that will win us the war. Don't you see, my friends?" She visibly forced herself to stand up straight, away from support, denying her weakness. "We've been given a specimen. An experimental subject. With this we can learn about our enemy, about their strengths and their weaknesses. We can find out how to defeat them. With _this_-" she stressed the impersonal term as though denying the Karalian a life and identity "-and with the help of the Doctor and his friends to rediscover our technology, our chances increase that we will after all find a way to win." 

* * *

Brilliant light blazed through Tegan's closed eyelids to bring her back to consciousness. She blinked, seeing nothing but a red haze, and groaned as she tried to move and a crippling agony shot through her body. Still blinded, she wondered where she was and what had happened to her. Then the pain concentrated itself in her neck and back, and she realised she hadn't been shot or otherwise mutilated, but had in fact simply fallen asleep. She became painfully aware of the hard bar of the chair arm which felt razor sharp under her shoulders. 

"Rabbits," she muttered. She was sprawled across the chair in the Doctor's room, having fallen asleep when she was supposed to stay awake to make sure he was all right. The light which had woken her was the early morning sun, blazing through the window. 

Gritting her teeth, she swung around in one swift, bloody-minded motion, unhooking her legs from the chair arm, and standing up. She mouthed 'ouch', followed by several less gentle words, then, massaging her aching neck, she searched the floor for the shoes carelessly kicked off several hours before. They were under the chair. Retrieving them did nothing whatsoever to help the state of her back. 

The Doctor's hat was also on the floor. She picked it up and hung it on the back of the chair. The Doctor himself was still peacefully snoozing, flat-out on the bed, fully dressed. Another time, it might have been funny. 

It finally registered upon her brain that there was someone else in the room. They were sitting in the chair by the window, they were watching her, and they had probably been watching her for some time. 

"Ha ha ha," she mouthed silently at Nyssa, whose face was adorned with a rare grin. She jerked a hand, thumb pointing, towards the door, and received a nod of understanding in return. 

Outside in the corridor, Nyssa outlined the conversation she'd had with the Doctor the night before. When she explained how he'd asked them to leave without him, Tegan said, "I hope you set him right about that idea." 

Nyssa nodded seriously, and she remembered that the Trakenite didn't have anywhere to go, any home to escape to. Images of Brisbane and London and the safe tedium of ordinary life flashed across her mind and, for a moment, it looked appealing. 

She shook her head to clear such thoughts from it. She wasn't leaving. 

"If we did get a chance to escape," Nyssa added thoughtfully, "We wouldn't actually have to leave. Maybe we could do something." 

"Do something? What could we do? It's poison - and from what Verani said it's pretty permanent, as well as being unique to this dive of a planet." 

She shrugged. "If I could get back to the TARDIS, to the laboratory there, there might be something I could do. But I'd need a sample of the toxin." 

"And Verani sent people to stand guard on the TARDIS," Tegan said. They stared at each other glumly. She sighed, and patted Nyssa's arm in a gesture as much meant to console herself as her friend. "Keep thinking." 

Tegan remembered the struggle down the stairs and then being shown to rooms by a Janovian menial whose conversational skills had extended to the occasional nod or shake of the head. She'd wondered if they weren't allowed to speak. 

Verani had gasped out a few more facts about the poison before she'd been carted off by her shocked people. As far as Tegan understood it, the poison did not kill outright but even one dose made the body reliant upon it, and without regular daily doses, the victim would die slowly and painfully. Evidently even the Doctor's alien physiology wasn't immune to it. 

It was an effective, if ruthless, way to force someone to help you, she thought. And ran through her head satisfying images of strangling Verani. 

"Do you think this place has coffee?" she asked Nyssa, who just looked mystified. 

At that moment the door opened a crack and the Doctor's head peered around it. His eyes focused on them blearily. "Ah," he said. "Good morning. Why are you standing around in the corridor?" 

"We're standing around here so we don't wake you up," Tegan replied, deadpan. 

He rubbed his eyes, squeezed them shut for several seconds, then opened them again with rather more comprehension in them. "Oh, good. Well, since I'm awake now you don't have to stand out here any more, do you?" And he disappeared back into the room. 

Tegan and Nyssa exchanged weary glances and followed. 

"I wonder when Verani and that lot will turn up and put us to work," Tegan said. "They don't have much time. I'm surprised they gave us the chance to rest at all." 

"Verani won't have been in any fit state to insist," Nyssa reminded her. "And the others don't seem to share her ruthless streak. They're probably too polite. Besides, we wouldn't be any good to them if we were too exhausted to work." 

"If I've recovered, Verani will have." The Doctor was standing staring out of the window. Tegan joined him and saw the Janovians in the street going about their business; much like the day before, only more so. They were speeding up the unearthing of their technological heritage. "It won't be long before they arrive to demand our cooperation." He paused and frowned thoughtfully. "I hope they bring breakfast." 

"Breakfast," she muttered disgustedly. Then she re-thought her stance and asked, "Do you think they have coffee?" 

"We can always hope." 

Tegan studied him. He looked all right, if slightly drained, and he seemed cheerful enough. She didn't trust his appearance of health, but decided not to make a fuss about it. She'd make sure she stayed near him, though, just in case. 

Presently there was a tap on the door and Verani entered, followed by another Janovian with a tray. "Good morning," Verani said civilly. 

The Doctor ignored her and walked over to examine the tray. "We're in luck, Tegan. Breakfast." In afterthought, he smiled absently at Verani and returned her greeting, observing, "You look well." 

"So do you. I'm glad. There is much to be done, and we must start work soon." 

The Doctor took the tray and immediately handed it to Tegan, who set it down on the chair and regarded it with suspicion. The jug of drink definitely wasn't coffee. She sniffed at it warily. It was fruit juice, and breakfast was a plate piled high with what looked like some sort of sweet pastries. She wondered whether to trust it. 

"It's quite all right," Verani said dryly. "There is no reason for drugs or poison now. I have already achieved what I want." 

Tegan glared at her and looked to the Doctor for support. 

"I imagine it should be okay," he said. "They have to feed us." She couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic, but she was hungry and if she didn't eat the food the Janovians supplied it didn't look as though she'd get to eat at all, so she poured herself a drink of fruit juice and defiantly picked up a pastry and bit into it. 

Verani smiled with a kind of drawn amusement. "I'll leave you for now. I'll send someone shortly to escort you all to the vaults. I will meet you there." With a half-bow and a smile that was almost an apology, she left the room, her silent companion trailing after her. 

"Well," Nyssa said. "At least we got food." She picked up one of the pastries and studied it intently, as if she was going to write a thesis on it or something. 

"They taste all right," Tegan said. She turned to the Doctor. "You're going to do what they want, then? Help them?" 

"Yes." He looked uncomfortable. "After a fashion. I've no desire to die yet, and while there's life there's hope. And hopefully something will come up if we play along for the moment - that is, if you're still set on staying here?" He must've seen the answer in their faces. "Although whatever happens, I can't ultimately save them. Either I'll fail, or I'll have to refuse them at the last. It can't happen. It didn't happen. The problem is, Verani knows that, she's anticipating that refusal, and with the intelligence and ruthlessness she's shown so far, that worries me a great deal." 

Tegan read in his expression that he didn't see any way out. She sighed and reached for the tray again. Might as well enjoy breakfast, if nothing else. 

* * *

**Chapter 6**

The dusty street where the entrance to the vaults had been dug out was incongruously bright with activity. The Janovian workers seemed to have increased their efforts tenfold and there was a steady stream of artefacts being loaded onto departing carts. It should have been a miserable day, with every life on the planet doomed, but instead both suns blazed down from a cloudless sky. The Doctor, shirtsleeves rolled up in the heat, sat on a stack of loose paving slabs at the edge of the dig and watched Janovian children playing in the dust. 

With some small portion of his mind he was aware of background noise, of Tegan's voice sounding from across the other side of the vast pit, complaining, demanding loudly to be told how long they were going to have to wait for Verani, who had after all summoned them there in the first place. Mostly, however, he was concentrating on the children. 

There were two of them, both looking the equivalent of about seven or eight, in human terms, but from what he knew of the Janovians it was hardly sensible to think of them in human terms. The little girl and boy played with a very solemn, very Janovian dignity, yet at least they played. 

It was strange to watch. The Doctor mused on the implications of the presence of children in Janovian society, wondering how it fit in with what he suspected the Janovians were. He wondered if it was a natural mutation, a twist of evolution putting things back the way it considered they ought to be, before sentient beings who considered they knew better had mucked around with them. On the other hand, and perhaps more likely, it had been done by artificial engineering. He tried to work out how long it would have taken for the changes to occur naturally, and to work out how that would fit in with his developing theories, but there were so many other factors and possibilities, and it all became so convoluted as to evade even the brain of a Time Lord. 

A cart clattered past the children and a shower of small items were shaken from it as its wheel bumped over an irregularity in the paving. The two children retrieved the fallen objects and ran after the cart, throwing the mislaid items back with unerring aim. For a moment, the Doctor saw the Janovian race as a well-tuned biological machine, with its different components acting in harmony, even these smallest - then the illusion dissipated and there were just two children, running and tripping and quietly laughing across the dusty road. 

They made him smile, until he remembered they were doomed as the rest of their race, and as impossible to save. 

He was drawn out of his contemplations by the tap of a hand on his shoulder and Nyssa's voice. "Doctor - Verani's here." 

"Ah." He stood up, the motion bringing on a few twinges of pain, a reminder of the ravages of the poison, that he locked away in a corner of his brain unimpressed by them. He tore his eyes from the children and took his hat off to fan the hot air away from his face. "Time for the guided tour then, I take it? I hope you remembered the tickets." 

Nyssa frowned. In her heavy Traken clothes she looked hot and unhappy. He offered her his hat. They walked around the dig to where a bad-tempered Tegan was standing next to Verani, and Nyssa fanned her face with the hat, and the Doctor remarked, "Don't worry, I imagine it will be cooler underground." 

They were now standing directly below the facade of the building which he had been informed was the oldest structure above Janovian soil, the first structure the Janovians' technically-minded ancestors had built when they settled the planet. 

Tegan was glaring at Verani. "Can't we hurry up and get out of this heat? I thought you people were in a hurry. Your sense of urgency doesn't seem to have prevented us from having to wait here half an hour." 

"Hush, Tegan," the Doctor said, half-heartedly, but for once it worked and she fell into a sullen silence. Verani inclined her head politely, then slid down on her knees at the hardened mud edge of the pit and eased herself as far down the side as possible before letting go. She landed on her feet. The drop was at least three metres. 

"No," said Tegan. "Absolutely not under any circumstances whatsoever." 

"Motion seconded," murmured Nyssa. 

The Doctor sighed, and prepared to climb down after the First Councillor. "I'll catch you," he promised. 

Tegan scowled and didn't wait for him. She went to the edge of the pit and repeated Verani's manoeuvre. She didn't land on her feet, but hit the ground and rolled. Evidently she had climbed enough trees in her childhood to know human ankles did not usually accept the kind of stress Verani had just subjected hers to. The Doctor followed and between them they helped Nyssa down. 

"Finished?" Verani asked sardonically, and pretended not to hear Tegan's muttered reply. She stared at the Doctor, and her chin jerked up like she'd had a low-voltage shock, "I apologise. I forgot that your companions are not made of such stern stuff as we are." 

He elbowed Tegan before she responded to that one, disconcerted that Verani had again plucked the thought from his mind. 

The hatch the Janovians had unearthed was at the far side of the pit they'd dug out searching for it. The workers had cleared, and the Doctor couldn't recall noticing them pack up and leave. The Janovians seemed to be proficient at unobtrusiveness, as though it was a genetic trait. He stood with the others at the side of the hatch and stared down at a treacherous looking metal staircase that wound down below the city for an untold distance. There was a feeble joke of a hand rail, and the stairs were steep and narrow. There was nothing else visible beyond but darkness. 

"Looks like fun," Tegan said and, addressing Verani, "What is it with you people and steps?" 

"What about light?" Nyssa asked. 

"There are switches at various levels of the stairs," the First Councillor said blandly, slipping into her Seer mode with ease as she began to descend. "Powered by self-contained energy units. The workers switched them off when they left to conserve power. Follow me. I will not let you fall." 

The Doctor waved the others on in front while he paused briefly to examine the seals on both the hatch and its surround. "Interesting. Vacuum seals to prevent decay or corrosion in stored items. The vaults could have been here a very long time indeed." Noticing how far behind he was, he abandoned his study and hurried after his companions. 

They passed several levels on the way down, all of which Verani dismissed as already cleared out and/or catalogued. As they descended, she flicked small switch mechanisms fixed to the side of the handrail, and the lights of each level they passed blinked on before them and off again in their wake. The Doctor had taunting glimpses of rows of carefully stacked and preserved items, mechanisms and machines he almost recognised the outline of but would need a closer examination to confirm. Types of technology that did not belong in this time and place at all. 

The descent had an almost supernatural feel to it. Where they had previously roasted in the hot sun above ground, now they shivered in the cold dark. The darkness itself, thick as a shroud and surrounding their current small oasis of light in all directions, would have been oppressive enough, but added to it there was the weight of ages and the sheer history exuded by the contents of the vault. The unknown peered at them from the blackness on all sides. It seemed they would never come to the end of the stairs, would simply walk downwards forever. 

The Doctor found himself tiring and recognised the symptoms of the same in the others, but Verani was forging on ahead, apparently unwilling to stop, though she must be feeling the same exhaustion dragging at her, and he could hear her breathing in harsh gasps. He could only conclude that they were nearing their destination, and so he said nothing. 

The air was stuffy, but not so much as he might have expected. There was no dust. He wondered at the immensity of the task the Janovians' ancestors had faced, first of constructing the artificial underground system, then of placing everything inside it, then of sealing it tight and airless to preserve the items left within. A quite miraculous achievement. 

Ahead, Verani flicked on another switch. She had stopped on a solid platform, where the staircase ended. She looked up at them, the bold bone structure of her face made cadaverous by the meagre light. She said, "This is the lowest level. Here are the machines I want you to see." 

* * *

In the lab where Jovanka had died, Luthen lay strapped to a mockery of an examination table, trying to make pictures out of the oddly-shaped cracks in the ceiling because the other option was watching Kweril take apart his cybernetic arm. 

There was no danger of outright violence again with the old councillor in the room, but Luthen thought he preferred the role of prisoner under interrogation to that of experimental subject. 

He knew it had been night, briefly, and now it was day again. He was contemplating sleep. He couldn't imagine Kweril minding much, engrossed as he was in his task. 

The Janovians didn't seem to tire. Crivthen hadn't left to rest at all, yet despite his age was none the worse for the constant activity. The elderly councillor intrigued Luthen. He hadn't seen many people who were old before. All the others had been aliens too. The Karalian never lived so long. 

Crivthen hung around the edges of the room like a shadow, avoiding the gaze of their lab-rat. Luthen didn't want anyone's pity, let alone an enemy's, but he still wondered about the old man, and about the Janovians with their obedience to Verani, which was occasionally reluctant but never actively questioned. As though it had been programmed into them, somehow. 

Verani had declared it useless to try to get any information from him, and though she'd looked apologetic about Kweril's actions he didn't think that was the reasoning behind her decision. He sensed she was ruthless enough to employ whatever methods proved necessary. No, she'd looked at him and she'd seemed to look through him, seemed to take from his mind that he knew nothing and wouldn't have told them anything if he did. She'd ordered him brought to the lab instead, where Kweril was set to work. 

She'd helped the Mirosan for a while, her expression oddly detached. Then she'd left, abandoning him to Kweril until Crivthen reappeared and was stern and disapproving again. After that, Kweril made an effort to restrain himself and complete his task with purely scientific efficiency. 

Luthen had given up trying to reason with them. He was too tired, and besides, why should they listen to him? To them, he wasn't a sentient being. He was a monster, a killer... a subject to be caged and studied. 

* * *

Nyssa stood with the others within the glow given out by the last light at the base of the stairs, feeling the press of the depths above and the weight of the darkness all around. She tried to look upon the vaults with scientific detachment, but somehow they unnerved her anyway. 

"It's like some mythical tomb!" 

Tegan's voice was a nervous, slightly giddy half-whisper, but it still caused Nyssa to tense in fear as its quavering sound echoed around the unseen boundaries of the darkened space, flung hollowly back at them from all sides. She hugged her arms around her chest in an effort to defeat the cold, and thought of the vastness implied by the echo. Looking upwards, she saw nothing. The tiny light cast pitifully and failed to reach the ceiling. And Tegan was right - it felt more like some ancient hall than a functional storage chamber. The air was thin and cold. She tried to guess at how far underground they were and her calculation left her breathless. 

The loudness of the echo had shrouded all of them in silence again. Only Verani had moved, to the curtain of blackness past the extent of the lit area, both arms outstretched to feel her way. With abrupt success, she flooded the lowest level of the vaults with light. 

As Nyssa's vision cleared, the full enormity of the chamber they stood within became apparent. Around the stairway was a roughly circular space perhaps twelve metres in diameter, wherein lay only empty floor. Around this, and away from it, there stretched many corridors bounded not by walls but by rows of equipment stacked high and single machines too large to stack. Occasional columns rose up to the ceiling and it was in front of one of these, upon which was fixed a complex series of switches, that Verani stood. 

The incongruity of the floodlighting which illuminated every corner, dissolving the vault's mysterious shadows, took away none of the unease the vast chamber held. Instead, seeing it in stark detail increased its grip of terror. Nyssa felt fingers of ice tighten inside her chest. 

The Doctor, she saw, was similarly stricken by the sight of the machines. He gave her a look of trepidation equalling her own and headed for the nearest aisle of machinery, walking with a fearful lassitude that she'd really rather not see in him. She wanted decisiveness, brilliance - a plan to get them far away from all this. But miracles weren't always possible to deliver. She followed him. 

In the background, she was aware of Verani speaking. Her low voice sounded like a dirge. "I can't See any of these," she explained. "Only emotive impressions. Pain and death. Nothing I can work with - nothing I can use to work them with. Kweril says they're too advanced, he doesn't understand them, except that they are machines of war and that it would be potentially disastrous to ourselves to tamper with them, lacking knowledge. That's why I brought you here. You recognise what they are, don't you?" 

They had reached the threshold of the aisle and, staring down it, Nyssa felt as though all the breath had been squeezed out of her by the sight, It left her speechless and stunned. The end of the aisle was only just visible in the distance. So many, she thought. Too much... 

"What is it?" Tegan asked. "What's wrong?" From the tone of her voice she had already guessed the answer. 

Nyssa remembered to breathe again and forced her gaze away from the vault's contents, sweeping over Tegan's eyes to meet the Doctor's. He looked appalled. She could imagine his horror at the idea of using any of this equipment against the Karalian. Or any sentient race. 

He answered Tegan. "This place is lined with the worst horrors and nightmares technology has produced. It's a maze of instruments of genocide." 

"Then it can defeat the Karalian?" Verani asked. 

"Oh, yes." He had taken his hat off and now held it to his chest in a funereal gesture. "With some of the machines in here..." He faltered, frowned, then finished lamely, "I'd say you could stop their invasion, yes." 

Nyssa knew he'd been about to say that with some of this equipment, they could not only destroy the Karalian invasion fleet but every Karalian alive and every planet they occupied. Some of the machines appeared more advanced than Traken's technology had been. She stood in front of a device whose purpose she pieced together by logical extrapolation from its recognisable components. "You could destroy an entire planet with this," she said, hearing her own voice a horrified whisper. 

"Well, fortunately we don't need to go quite that far," the Doctor said quickly. "A few ships should be quite adequate. Once they see what we can do that should send them, ah, scuttling back to their other conquests." His voice was more breathless than usual, and she knew he was still playing along with Verani, desperately lying through his teeth. 

"Well," he continued, grinning nervously and glancing at each of them in turn. He put his hands into his pockets, paced a few steps, then returned to his original spot. "We'd better have a look around and see if we can find something slightly less dramatic than this delightful contraption-" he reached out as though to pat the machine Nyssa had referred to, then changed his mind "-to do the job, hadn't we?" 

Nyssa sighed. "Yes, Doctor." 

Tegan, she noted, just glowered, looking uneasy and bored. 

* * *

"Wake up." Luthen groaned, tried to roll over and found he couldn't. He was strapped to a smooth surface. Then he remembered, and rolled his head to face the direction the voice had come from, opening gummed-shut eyes. He saw only Kweril, so he closed them again. He no longer had any control over his cybernetic arm - the Mirosan must have discovered how to disconnect the power. 

He felt a clawed finger prod him in the ribs with sufficient force to pierce the skin. He reluctantly opened his eyes again, but found Kweril's back to him - the alien was leaning over a nearby lab table analysing blood samples. He'd just woken him up for the sake of it. Luthen scanned the rest of the room - as much of it as he could see - and saw the old councillor still there in the furthest corner of the room, looking disapproving but not actively doing anything to stop Kweril's small cruelties. 

"Enjoying yourself?" Luthen asked. Kweril didn't spare him a glance but, craning his head, he could see the skill and concentration with which the alien tested the blood samples. "Do you sideline in neural surgery as a hobby, too?" 

"I do this and that." The reply was hissed with dismissive contempt, but there was a hint of something else in there, a faint uneasiness about the topic. 

"Yes, but what _do_ you do? How is it you can use all these kinds of equipment?" 

"Silence!" 

A raised claw was halted by a look of reprimand from Crivthen. 

"Salvage, wasn't it, you said?" the councillor asked, frowning bemusement at Kweril's antagonism. 

"Salvage," Kweril repeated. "An expert in everything." 

Luthen laughed. It felt bizarre to be able to. "Salvage," he said. "Smuggling, perhaps? Piracy? Thievery? That's why you escaped when your planet's citizens were called up to fight in the war. You were on the wrong side of the law to be called. All that righteous anger and you're nothing but a common thief!" 

A glare from Crivthen wasn't enough to stop Kweril's violent retribution that time, but Luthen was so giddy with revelation he hardly felt it. 

"At least I'm not a murderer," the Mirosan snarled. 

Luthen felt blood welling from deep clawed scratches down the side of his face, and angled his head so it didn't run into his eyes. 

"Don't do that again." Crivthen's tone suggested he was beginning to lose patience. 

"We were a peaceful race once," Luthen said. "Content on our own planet. We had enough technology to be comfortable, our society was stable, population laws kept the numbers manageable, there was no need to expand. No need to fight. Do you know how it all started?" 

"You're butchers and sadists, and I don't want to hear any excuses," Kweril hissed. "There are no excuses. I don't want to know." 

"No," snapped Luthen. "But you're going to hear it." 

The Mirosan paused in his task to slap a scaly claw across Luthen's mouth, hard enough to aggravate the previous cuts' bleeding and open more new ones. "Is that so?" 

Crivthen gave Kweril an acidic glare. "I said there's no need for that. Let the boy speak. He may even say something useful." 

"The Syndrome came," Luthen said. Talking pulled at the cuts around his mouth, but he ignored the sensation. "Out of nowhere. We still don't know what caused it - whether it was something we did or something alien. And it decimated our population. We looked to our allies for help but they ignored us, afraid of contamination. In desperation we tried to contact some of them, sent ships, and the ships were refused even the most careful quarantined contacts. Some of them were destroyed. That's why we learned to fight. We had to fight. Every world the Karalian conquer adds a little more scientific knowledge to the pool, but it's not enough, not yet, to cure the Syndrome. Maybe nothing ever will be. But our leaders have a responsibility to the Karalian people, not to the aliens who denied us from the beginning." 

"You destroy planets," Kweril said. "You invade them and you infect them. And some of them, the ones whose native races can't handle the Syndrome as well as yours, they die." He'd set his clawed hand around Luthen's throat while he spoke, and Luthen stopped breathing. Couldn't breathe. He felt the claws drawing blood from his neck. 

"Let him go!" Crivthen snapped. The old man approached Kweril with such anger in his eyes that for a moment it seemed he'd attack his ally. "Whatever his race has done, you will keep your hands from him. You will conduct only the tests agreed upon - and I can barely bring myself to condone those!" 

The Mirosan let out a brief snarl then did as asked, and Luthen quietly enjoyed the luxury of breathing again. Kweril stooped to hiss in his ear. 

"I _will_ kill you," he snarled, and shot a look of pure poison at Crivthen before backing off. 

* * *

Tegan had decided she liked the vaults marginally less than she liked Verani, which she hadn't thought possible. Furthermore, she disliked intensely feeling like a spare part while the Doctor and Nyssa walked along the aisles of destructive technology, discussing the various items, an enthusiastic Verani tagging along behind them. Tired of their incomprehensible conversation, and the Doctor being too focused on the task of lying through his teeth to Verani even to provide his usual patronising explanations to her, Tegan wandered away from them. 

She frowned at the machinery she walked past, wondering if, had she been born in the kind of world Nyssa had, she would have learned to understand such things any better or if they'd still have gone way over her head. 

She knew she was moving further away from the others than she perhaps ought, but she was too annoyed to care. The initial shock of Verani's actions in trapping them, which had caused them to band so tightly together, was passing and leaving a futile numbness in its place. And the vault was making her feel... weird. Ghostly shivers that had nothing to do with the cold crept down her spine. 

She wanted do something to help the Doctor, but the situation did not require actions. Or at least, none she could think of, and subtlety was not one of her strengths. She felt crippled by the inaction and it made her want to scream in fury or hit something. 

Her vague explorations led her to the other side of the level, where the equipment looked more like component or broken parts than complete gadgets. She carried on down the aisle, sparing a glance back once to find she could no longer see the others in the aisle opposite. They must have moved on to another part of the vaults. Not being able to see them made her feel as though she was alone there. She ignored the heightened feelings of fear, telling herself she was being silly. There were no monsters here, nothing hiding in the dark. No dark for it to hide in. 

She carried on walking. A blank wall waited at the end of the aisle. Once she reached it, she would walk alongside, following it around until she found where the others had gone. 

She arrived at the wall. She turned and leaned against it, looking back the way she'd come, past the stairway in the centre of the level to where the others weren't. Her breathing was the only sound she could hear. Seized in a moment of weariness and grief, she closed her eyes, feeling tears spring up. She wondered why she'd joined the Doctor again in Amsterdam, when she'd had the choice. Were their own deaths on Janovay all that was left? 

The wall she was leaning on 'clicked'. 

She sprang away as though it had burned her and spun around - to witness a small section some four by four metres large dissolve away to reveal another room. 

It had been visible, she realised, thinking back to her approach. The wall had not been smooth, there had been dark lines on it tracing the shape of that square opening. There hadn't been any at the end of the other aisles. Had her subconscious headed her deliberately toward this part of the vault? 

She looked through into the room. More machinery. Just one, in fact, on its own. A large one. Something important? It had clearly merited special attention. 

Tegan looked around, and still couldn't see any sign of the others. The opening up of the wall had been utterly silent - they wouldn't know anything had happened. She took a step towards the gap, then stopped. No, she decided. She wasn't damn well falling for that one. She'd find the others first, then there could be someone to wait outside in case the wall closed up again. 

"Doctor!" she yelled, steeling herself for the horrendous echo. It still made her jump. "I've found something!" 

There was a reply from somewhere. She couldn't tell where because the echo threw the voice around, and she realised it must have done the same with hers. She ran back towards the centre of the level, where the stairs were, figuring she'd be able to spot them from there. The Doctor and Nyssa ran back into the central circle a few moments before she reached it herself. 

"There's another room!" she said, between gasps for breath. "Down there. The wall opened up!" 

She showed them back to it at a slower pace, and couldn't help but notice how the Doctor's expression became more severe the closer they got. Verani materialised to join them, but Tegan missed the exact moment of her ghostly arrival. When they reached the opening, Nyssa and Verani remained outside, just in case. 

It wasn't a large room, and the device filled most of it. Compared to some of the machines in the vault, it wasn't huge. It didn't look like any kind of weapon. It was a sprawling mass of circuits, tubes and wires that looked as though they'd been pulled out of something else entirely different and patched together. They stretched along the walls and ceiling and some of the floor itself, so that stepping into the room was more-or-less stepping inside the actual device. Into the wall of circuitry that practically covered the far end of the room were set people-sized capsules, with transparent fronts. Fixings to hold a person could be seen inside them, straps and electrodes and what-not. A helmet-like thing that presumably went over a head. 

"What is it?" Tegan asked. Her voice was shaking, as in fact she was herself, and she didn't know why. "Some kind of torture device?" Then she saw the Doctor's expression and clamped her mouth shut. 

He was horrified. She thought it was probably a good job Verani couldn't see it from where she stood. Nyssa stepped into the room while the First Councillor, mindful of duty, stayed on the threshold. 

"It's a time machine," the Trakenite said quietly. "Isn't it?" 

"In a very limited way, you could say that it was," he replied. 

"Gallifreyan?" 

"No." He seemed to be making an effort to recover his composure. "Not exactly. Parts of it are." 

"Salvaged?" Nyssa moved over to the capsules for a closer look. 

"Yes. Salvaged from a TARDIS, by the look of it. And a much more advanced model than mine. I barely recognise how they've developed and improved some of these components. Please don't touch anything!" 

"Sorry, Doctor." Nyssa drew her hand back. 

He apologised for snapping at her. 

Tegan was paying them only minimal attention. She stared at the machine. It seemed as though there was something staring back at her from it. She felt cold and sick, and wanted to look away but couldn't. She continued to stand there and meet its gaze while the Doctor and Nyssa discussed the workings of the device in a debate where the ratio of technical gobbledygook to plain sense was about ten to one. Words and phrases she could comprehend floated occasionally through to her. 

It's a time machine. Right, she understood that. The words chased each other around inside her head while she stared at it. A limited one. It can only travel within a limited time period, and it can't travel at all in space. It can only transport a few people, and even then they have to return to this space and time - it isn't permanent translation from one time period to another. The device anchors the body of the user. It was probably very dangerous to use, and next to useless for most practical purposes. 

None of that explained why it was looking at her. 

Then, it stopped. Tegan shook her head to clear it and wondered what kind of messed up hallucination that had been. She stared at the hunk of metal and parts that was nothing more than just that, and then the Doctor broke her attention and scared her half to death by clapping a friendly hand on her shoulder and telling her it was time to be going. 

"Don't do that!" she snapped. "I almost hit the ceiling!" 

He looked bemused, and she mumbled an apology. He shrugged, and continued a string of conversation she'd missed the beginning of, "Anyway, it's no good to us, and time is short. So..." 

He and Verani were already walking away. Tegan and Nyssa exchanged glances and trailed after them. She could hear the Doctor saying to Verani, "You remember the one? Yes, well, I expect that will do the job adequately, if you'd arrange to have it transported to somewhere we can set it up - the observation tower should be adequate - then I think we're in business... " 

Tegan glanced back in the direction of the separate room and its time device. The door was still open. They hadn't shut it, and it wasn't going to shut itself. Getting paranoid, she told herself, but couldn't laugh. 

"You found something, then?" she asked Nyssa, mostly rhetorically, and tried to forget the rest. 

* * *

**Chapter 7**

"Yow!" The Doctor pulled his hands back from the suddenly live circuit and rolled out from under the bulk of ancient, stroppy machine parts salvaged from the vaults. He lay on his back for several seconds staring at his smouldering fingers, then said, in a puzzled voice, "I'm sure that shouldn't have happened." 

"Is everything all right?" asked Councillor Bannot. He'd been hanging around since Verani had left some hours ago. Even with the poison, she didn't dare leave any of them alone. 

"It should be," the Doctor replied. "I'll have this sorted out soon." He contemplated the circuitry within the opened-up panel and tried to think of anything else he could 'find wrong'. This stall would only be good for another few hours, if that. The excuses were beginning to get rather feeble. The trouble was, they had to be good enough to fool Verani, who would look at it and spout a string of technical knowledge that exceeded his own. Fortunately, she wasn't capable of stringing it logically together to operate the machines herself, as though some fail-safe inside stopped her, but she knew enough to figure out a trick. 

They'd set up the machine at the top of the watch-tower. It had taken most of the day and now the night approached again. Tegan and Nyssa, who needed sleep, had gone back to their rooms hours ago. The only real problem with the machine itself was connecting it to a power source, but the task would not have been a problem had he wanted to do it. 

Refusing meant condemning the entire Janovian race. 

He tried to think about the possible consequences for the universe if he changed the course of history, but as Verani said, it was still weighing a possible against a definite. There was always a chance both could survive. 

It would be immensely irresponsible for him to gamble the universe's temporal stability for the sake of a few thousand people on an obscure colony. 

He was delving back into the workings of the machine, occasionally blowing on his burned fingers, when Verani returned. He heard her ascend the last few steps and stalk into the tower room. 

"Doctor?" she said. 

He emerged from beneath the machine and squinted up at her. She was holding a tray with two glasses of familiar liquid balanced on it. "Ah. Afternoon break. Do you have any tea and biscuits? No, I suppose not." He stood up and brushed down his clothes, removed his half-frame glasses and deposited them in a pocket. 

Verani dipped her head at Bannot, and then towards the door. Bannot made himself scarce. It was strange how she seldom needed words to command her subordinates. She held the tray out to the Doctor and he took one of the glasses. She took the other and discarded the tray on the stone floor. "How is the work proceeding?" she asked politely. 

"Ah... it's coming along. Should be finished tomorrow, I imagine. Plenty of time yet, isn't there?" 

"No," she said. She drained her glass. He noticed how her exhaustion seemed to fall away from her as she did. 

"No, I suppose not." He sighed and squinted into the depths of the drink. He'd been beginning to feel a little frayed at the edges. He drank, thinking it tasted like orange juice. He felt immediately revived and rather depressed. 

"It has to be said, you're taking this quite lightly. All things considered, you seem to be finding it very easy to save our world." Her voice was polite but her eyes were sarcastic. 

"Yes, well. Something like this seems to happen every few weeks or so. You could almost say it was in my job description." 

Verani, unamused, placed her empty glass on the floor and knelt down beside the energy projector; peered underneath it at the opened panel. "How much more do you have to do to this?" 

"There's a slight problem with the matter-energy transmuter circuit that has to be sorted out, and then there's the power source which will have to be left for the morning now, I can't work in the dark, and then..." His words trailed off as she reached into the live circuit, disconnected the two wires he'd twisted together wrongly and replaced them where they were supposed to be. 

When she stood up he saw her hands were burned; a fact she ignored. "It's fine," she said. "You can rest for a few hours and finish connecting the power supply after dawn. Then you will show me how to use it." 

The Doctor sighed. The crunch point was approaching. Verani knew it too. 

He looked out of the tower room's many windows. The red of the sunset was beginning to taint the sky. 

* * *

"I hate the days on this planet," Tegan said to Nyssa, who looked almost as tired and dishevelled as she felt herself. "Or nights. Or lack of. Or whatever." She stared at the sunset outside the window. "We're waking up as the sun's going down. It's ridiculous." 

"Not really." Nyssa spoke lightly, smiling a knowing smile. "It means we've got two hours of darkness to work with." 

"You're planning something." Tegan stared at her incredulously. "You were planning something before we went to sleep - when you suggested we went to sleep! - and you didn't say anything?" 

"Would you have slept at all if I had?" 

She could find no reply to that, nor did she want to try. Eagerly, she asked, voice hushed because a guard was probably still snooping at the door, "What is it?" 

"It's just an idea." Nyssa looked uncomfortable, her previous confidence dissipating. "It's probably a little silly. I don't know if it will work." 

"Well, go on." 

"I'm not entirely convinced it's wise. I know the Doctor would disapprove." 

Tegan felt chilled. "It's something to do with that time machine, isn't it?" 

She received a reluctant nod in reply. "The problem is, it's dangerous. And it relies rather a lot on you. I've been thinking about the temporal device ever since we saw it, trying to work out if there's any way it could help us. The Doctor said it was useless for any practical purposes, but I think he's wrong. If we could escape to reach it, I have an idea how we can use it to get us out of this." 

"Why me, Nyssa? You know I don't know anything about this technical stuff-" 

"Exactly. The device requires its operator to be inside the machine in order to time travel, but it needs to be activated and controlled from the outside. You couldn't do that. I'm not entirely sure I can, but I could make educated guesses." 

"So it would have to be me inside that thing?" Tegan didn't know what to think. The very idea scared her silly. "But why? What could we do anyway? We can't stop any of the things that have happened from happening, can we? You know what the Doctor says about that sort of thing." 

"Yes, but... I was thinking, what if we did something that wouldn't change what has happened so far, except until we knew we'd done it? Something that would make things look just the same, but once we knew it was there it would allow us an escape." 

"Eh?" 

Nyssa stood up and paced agitatedly. Tegan had seldom seen her so worked up, she was usually the very essence of calm. "I've worked out a formula for a toxic substance that would have the same superficial effects on the Doctor and Verani as we've seen, but which would not be deadly. The laboratory in the TARDIS contains all the substances you'd need, labelled in sealed containers. You could use the machine to travel back, then you could replace Verani's store of the poison..." 

"Me? How could I possibly mix anything up from a formula? It'd be as likely to kill them both outright! I can't do it, Nyssa." 

"No." Nyssa shook her head in morose agreement. "It was a stupid idea. I might end up killing you. You might end up killing Verani and the Doctor - and that's even assuming we managed to do all the rest in the first place." 

They stood in silence for several minutes, and the more Tegan thought about it the more Nyssa's plan seemed to make sense. "Let's do it," she said. "It's the best chance we've got - heck, it's the only chance we've got. We don't seem to have much to lose. If we stay here, we'll either become corpses or Karalian cyborgs, and I don't like either of those options. This way at least we have a chance to save ourselves and the Doctor." 

Nyssa stared. "You really mean that?" 

"Yes - if the Doctor was never really poisoned, all we have to do is escape from the Janovians, and compared with Cybermen and the Master and Omega and all that, well - it'll be a piece of cake." 

"Cake? Oh, I see." Nyssa contemplated the floor. "It will be a terrible risk. And if the Doctor finds out I don't think he'd be happy." 

"Don't tell him them," Tegan said. "Tell him if he gives us that chance to escape he suggested we'll try to get to the TARDIS and away." 

"I don't like the idea of not telling him what we're doing." 

"We can't tell him. He might stop us, or even tell the Janovians so we can't do it. There's nobody at the vault now. Once we're out of this building and away from Verani we should be all right. We have to try!" 

"Yes," Nyssa sighed. "In that case I'd better explain that formula to you. Unless you can get it exactly right we can't risk it. We're playing with some very toxic substances here." 

"That's for sure," Tegan agreed dryly. 

* * *

A familiar polite tap on the door made them both jump and exchange panicked glances. "Now?" Tegan whispered, suddenly nervous. She hadn't expected they'd have to put their plan into action quite so soon. 

Nyssa nodded grimly. The door opened cautiously and the Doctor peered around it. Seeing them standing awake, he flung it fully open and walked in, beaming, to bid them a bright "Good evening." Bannot lurked in the doorway behind him, but there was no sign of Verani. Seeing them looking, the Doctor added, "She went off somewhere when I left the tower. You can relax." He seemed to sense their tension hadn't eased by much. "What is it? What's wrong?" 

"We need to talk to you. In private." Tegan directed a meaningful glare at Bannot. 

The Doctor stared at her a moment in suspicion, then turned around and apologised politely before shutting the door in the Janovian's face. "What are you planning?" he asked. 

Tegan steeled herself to the lie. "I want to go home, Doctor. I'm not staying here to be killed or turned into a cyborg. You said earlier you'd give Nyssa instructions of how to operate the TARDIS, and she could take me to Earth. I've decided to take up that offer. I'm sorry." 

He looked more suspicious than relieved. "Tegan..." He hesitated and shook his head, evidently deciding against whatever he'd been about to say. "Yes, you're right. You have to leave." He seemed to collect more enthusiasm as he spoke. She felt guiltily, letting him think they were escaping to safety when the reality was anything but. He looked across to the window, where the curtain of darkness outside was almost complete now, and he had to realise that there was no accident to this timing. 

"Since now is our best chance, we must act at once. Nyssa, you must remember these instructions... ah, no, I've a better idea." He made a thorough search of his pockets, producing eventually his half-frame glasses - which he put on - a small notebook, and a green crayon. He began to scribble furiously, inclining the notebook towards Nyssa and speaking all the time, a fast and furious tirade of incomprehensible technical garbage that made Tegan's brain hurt. 

If their plan didn't work she might never see him again. She might die. He might die. Tegan bit her lip and tried to hold back tears; it was no time to damn well start blubbing. She scowled because the alternative would show too much complicating grief their plan really didn't need. She watched Nyssa pretending to concentrate on the notebook. 

The Doctor finished writing and thrust a handful of torn out pages into Nyssa's hands. He stared at the notebook and crayon, then gave those to her too. He pulled his half-frames off and shoved them into a pocket. "Now, we don't have much time. The night is short, as it were. I'll distract Bannot, and you run. I have an idea to stop them from chasing after you. These people don't have much heart for this sort of thing without Verani's orders, and if I can keep her occupied... well, never mind that. Goodbye, Tegan, Nyssa." His voice was quick and breathless, but it slowed down for the last few words, as though that was something he couldn't hurry. 

"Goodbye, Doctor." Tegan angrily stifled a sob, and consequently the words came out far harsher than intended. Nyssa echoed the words with calm sorrow. 

He stared at them both in turn, as though fixing them in his mind to remember, then rushed for the door. Stopped with his hand poised over the handle and turned back. 

He said, "Whatever it is you're planning, don't. Just leave... Please?" 

Before either of them could reply he was through the door, shoving past Bannot, yelling "Catch me if you can!" in a crazy, crazy voice, and he was running down the corridor away from them, coat tails flying in his wake. Bannot stared at Tegan and Nyssa, who stared back and shrugged. Then the Janovian recovered his senses, and sense of priority, and sprinted after the Doctor, legs flapping ridiculously in his white robes. 

Tegan turned to Nyssa, who was shredding their route back to Earth into pieces the size of confetti that fluttered to the floor, fragments of scrawled green handwriting bisected by jagged torn edges. 

"Come on then!" she snapped, and she grabbed Nyssa's hand, pulling her out of the room. Nyssa quickly recovered her balance and they ran, hand in hand, heading away from where the Doctor had led Bannot. 

* * *

Verani was back, Luthen noticed. She walked quietly into the room and crossed over to where Kweril was examining small parts of the laser removed from Luthen's cybernetic arm, Crivthen peering uncomprehendingly over his shoulder. 

Luthen had been released from the examining table and was now slouched in a fairly comfortable chair. They hadn't tied him again because it was unnecessary; his synthetic limbs were deactivated, and he couldn't do anything to remedy that without attracting notice. 

He watched his captors closely, hoping for some distraction he might use to repair his leg, although his chances of escape even should he succeed seemed slight. Verani stood and watched Kweril work, and silence filled the room, until presently the Mirosan's incredulous curse broke it. He brandished a handful of laser parts at the two Janovians, hissing, "Do you _know_ what this is?" Unsurprisingly, neither of them replied. Verani looked irritated. "It's a laser - and it was working. Until I deactivated it, it could have fired. He could have killed us all. Do you know what this means?" 

"What does it mean?" Crivthen asked impatiently. 

"It means we're meant to have caught him. It's a trap! Why else would he hold from killing us? It's all a Karalian trick!" 

Luthen, overcome with disbelief, laughed. His laughter sounded manic, edged with despair, and too late it occurred to him that this reaction would only appear to confirm the Mirosan's suspicions. "It's not true," he said quickly. "You can't think I'd put myself here, willingly." 

Kweril slammed the handful of components down on the table, with a shattering sound. "It's a distraction! We're meant to concentrate on interrogating him... while they arrive earlier than his whinging tells us!" 

"Told you _what_?" Luthen snapped. "I've told you nothing! What kind of a trick could... you can't be stupid enough to believe-" In his fury, he tried to stand, but his leg gave out and he fell back into the chair. He cursed. Cursing hurt his torn and bleeding face. He cursed again. He wanted his laser back. 

With a strength that amazed, Verani casually restrained Kweril's angry lunge towards him. She looked undecidedly between the two of them, evidently aware Kweril's deduction didn't necessarily follow from the facts. "Maybe," she said carefully. "I will find the Doctor and make him finish the weapon now. Then we will match the Karalian violence for violence, whenever they arrive." 

She halted halfway to the door, and said, "There probably isn't any point in continuing this now the Doctor has come up with an altogether cleaner solution-" She did a double-take when she realised what she'd just said, but let it stand. "But you may continue if you judge it profitable for future encounters with the Karalian. I leave it in your hands now." Her sweeping gaze encompassed both Kweril and Crivthen equally - subduing a flutter of panic in Luthen's gut, fear that he'd be left completely in the Mirosan's hands. She turned again to leave. 

The door burst open before she could set her hand upon it, and she stumbled and caught her balance against the wall. The breathless Janovian menial stammered out a stressed apology before announcing, "The Doctor and his companions have escaped!" 

The impact on Verani was much the same as if she'd been slapped. Her balance wavered, then her back straightened, her chin raised, and fury sparked in her eyes. "Continue," she rapped, white-lipped. 

Since all attention was hooked on the menial, Luthen took the opportunity to begin surreptitiously trying to bring his artificial leg back online, and tried to put aside for the moment the indication of those words which sent his thoughts spinning. 

Jovanka was still alive somewhere. He could save her yet. 

* * *

The long corridor he'd turned down led to a dead end, but he could hear pursuit too close behind to turn back now. A window in the far wall beckoned, and the Doctor skidded to a halt in front of it and stared out. The Janovian street two floors below was barely visible in the darkness, and it looked a long way down, but it wasn't far enough. 

Bannot rounded the corner at the end of the corridor. He'd been joined by three or four more Janovians, and they followed close after him. The Doctor couldn't see many options - he refused to resort to violence. He began to climb out of the window, rough edges of stone scraping skin from his hands as he swung over the sill and hung by his fingertips against the outside wall of the building, feet scrabbling for a hold. His pursuers sounded far too near. 

Toes caught in a crack in the stonework just as his hands were beginning to slip. The light from the open window made it slightly easier to see through the dark blanket of the Janovian night. He looked around frantically, knowing that if he didn't move Bannot and the others would simply grab his arms and pull him helplessly back inside. There was a drainage pipe about a metre away on his right. Too far to reach easily, but there was nothing else. 

The noise of their footfalls announced they were almost upon him. The drainage pipe was metal, slightly rough with corrosion. It might be solid enough to hold his weight... 

The Doctor tensed in preparation, then realised there was no time to prepare. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, opened them again quickly when it occurred to him he'd rather need to see, and trying not to think about it too much, he launched himself across the gap. 

He caught hold of a ridged join in the pipe, more by accident than design. He had time to curl the fingers of one hand around it, but then the wrench of his falling weight defeated his grip. He felt the joints in his fingers pop. He slid down a few feet before managing to close both hands around the pipe. Like sandpaper, the rusted metal sawed off the top layer of skin from his palms and he yelped in pain, but didn't let go. 

"Doctor!" He looked up to see Bannot's face peering out over the ledge of the window now above and to the left of him. The councillor's features were dark and invisible against the backdrop of light. The Doctor was too busy getting his breath back to reply. For a long moment, the sound of his own breathing was all he could hear. 

By the time he'd recovered his breath he'd decided that answering Bannot would be a waste of time. He ignored the councillor and stared up, craning his neck around to see the upper floors of the building towering overhead. A long distance, and one that had to be travelled quickly, despite the pain of his damaged hands, if he was going to provide Tegan and Nyssa with the cover they needed for their escape. He needed to draw Verani's attention to himself, to make her overlook his companions. Her people never acted violently without her express orders, and if she didn't send anyone after Tegan and Nyssa, it was quite possible nobody would pursue them. 

"Doctor, listen to me!" Bannot called. "This isn't solving anything. We don't want to harm you. What can you possibly achieve by this, except to cause harm to _yourself_, and perhaps even death?" 

"Ah, well," the Doctor said. "I should think that's as much your problem as mine, wouldn't you?" 

He began to climb. 

* * *

"I'm worried about him," Tegan said, as they rested a moment at a blind corner on the stairs leading to the ground floor. "What do you think he intends to do?" 

Nyssa shook her head, breathing in small gasps. "I don't know," she said finally. Her hair hung over her face and her expression was invisible. "But whatever he's doing, it's succeeding in distracting the Janovians. And remember, our escape may be his only chance." 

"That's no good if he dies now!" Tegan snapped, immediately regretting the volume of the words, but not nearly as much as she regretted the words themselves. Nyssa had no answer to that, merely continuing to shake her head and breathe shuddering gulps of air. Tegan realised her friend wasn't necessarily out of breath from running, and guiltily gave Nyssa's arm an affectionate but businesslike squeeze. "Come along," she said firmly. "It's not going to happen. Forget I said it. We're going to succeed." 

* * *

Luthen tried again to bend his knee, and was so taken by surprise when it worked that he had to clamp his jaw down hard upon an exclamation. He shot a covert glance at Kweril and the Janovians, hoping they hadn't noticed. 

The leg worked, but whether it would remain working once he stood and tried to run, after Kweril's tampering, was another matter. Even if it did, could he escape while quite literally disarmed, his cybernetic arm a hollow shell with most of its circuits scraped out and strewn across the lab workbench? 

He waited. He didn't have long to wait. Verani hurriedly departed the room with Crivthen and the menial at her heels, and he was left alone with Kweril. 

Ten minutes ago he'd been dreading such an eventuality. Now he welcomed it. It was an effort not to grin with anticipation as the Mirosan approached. Kweril scowled at him in silent contemplation, then said, disgustedly, "Karalian. So much blood on your hands. So many races you've walked over and brutalised." He shook his scaly head. "And you really don't look like anything at all." 

Luthen lashed his cybernetic leg out in a swift arc and knocked Kweril's legs from under him. He landed in a colourful, scaly heap on the floor, and Luthen stood and swung the foot of his cybernetic leg onto the Mirosan's neck, pressing down hard. If he leaned his weight forward now, his enemy's neck would snap. Kweril knew it too, and stared up fearfully, yellow eyes wide in terror. 

"Not so threatening without a gun, are you?" Luthen remembered the way Kweril had killed Jovanka, who had only been trying to prevent slaughter. Disgustedly, he kicked the Mirosan in the side of the head. The alien lapsed into unconsciousness. 

Luthen scraped the parts of his arm off the workbench and into his pockets. He couldn't repair the damage one-handed, but he wasn't going to leave them around for Kweril and the Janovians to play with. He reclaimed his weapons and strapped them into their customary places about his person. 

He resisted the urge to kick Kweril's unconscious body as he left the lab. 

* * *

Tegan helped Nyssa to hide the unconscious Janovian they'd run into, hauling him into the shadows of the steps leading up to the council building. 

She'd noticed there was some kind of commotion going on, on the upper floors. She could see the figures outlined in the windows over at the far side, heads craning out and up. After a brief moment of panic, Tegan had realised she and Nyssa weren't the focus of their attention. What was the Doctor up to? 

They didn't have time to worry, they had their own task, and the Janovian night was only two hours long. They had to trust the Doctor to know what he was doing. 

She signalled to Nyssa silently, and together they headed down the street, blanketed by the protective darkness, back towards the vaults. 

* * *

She was nothing more than a featureless white face staring up at him from the shadows below. Her voice was a frail sound almost dissipated by the breath of the night wind. "Come down," Verani pleaded. "You can't do this to us. You can't do this to yourself." 

"You haven't given me much choice," the Doctor yelled back. He was hunched uncomfortably on the edge of the roof, gripping at square white tiles whose own hold on the roof was less secure than he would have liked. His hands oozed blood, making his grip precariously slippery. 

Verani was leaning head and shoulders out of the window nearest to him, which was some metres away, tucked just below the slope of the roof. Above him, across the expanse of the roof, the watch-tower loomed, a vast dark shadow blocking out the stars. "You can't do this!" Verani yelled again. "Doctor, we need you to save us!" 

"The rest of my obligations need me to fail," he replied. "What else would you suggest I do?" 

"Come back in and talk about this," she begged. "I never wanted to be responsible for your death. Please..." 

"Responsible?" he snapped. "You poisoned us both! How _responsible_ an act was that? I'd say you're pretty _responsible_ for all of this mess by anyone's standards!" 

"I know," she said. "I know, I'm sorry..." The rest of her plea was torn away by the wind. The Doctor, in truth, felt sorry for her. But he had to push her to distraction if Tegan and Nyssa were to escape, and keep her too worked up to sense that was his real intention. 

Except he was beginning to realise that, while the present situation had initially been only a stall to let Tegan and Nyssa slip through the Janovians' fingers, he couldn't escape the conclusion that the lie itself offered an inarguably logical, if bleak, solution. Perhaps the only one available. He was running out of options and out of time, and was afraid he would weaken if he continued to feign support for the Janovians, afraid he'd help them for real after all. If he carried out his threat and jumped, history would be safe. 

He'd given Tegan and Nyssa the instructions to escape in the TARDIS, assuming it worked, but wherever it took them the chances were it would be better then Janovay on the eve of the apocalypse. Even if they were planning something other than escape, once he was dead they'd have no choice but to leave. 

He stared downwards. It was too dark to see the ground from so far above. The climb to such a height had been nightmarish, but he'd had to be sure a fall would mean certain death in order to threaten Verani with it. He'd survived such a fall before by way of his fourth regeneration. 

This time, there would be no survival. 

* * *

**Chapter 8**

There was something going on in the council building. The few Janovians Luthen saw in the corridors were grouped around street-facing windows, their necks craned upwards to the roof. Avoiding recapture didn't prove to be a problem, with their attention averted elsewhere, and the one time he turned a corner and almost ran straight into one of them, the alien just blinked at him vaguely and carried on as if Luthen wasn't there. 

He ought to leave, but curiosity pulled at him. It might, he thought, be something to do with Jovanka and her friends. If he could find them, warn them of what had happened... what was going to happen. She'd saved his life. If he could, he'd save hers. 

After some searching, he found an unoccupied window and, casting a nervous glance down the length of the empty corridor, leaned out of it. Balance was difficult with only one usable arm, the other arm a dead weight he had to drag along. 

Stretched out precariously, he could just about see the figures on the roof, some distance to his right and several floors above. His breath caught in his throat when he saw the figure sprawled on the very edge of the roof, almost hanging over. 

A voice rang out on the night air, drifting down to him. Verani's. She said, "Don't jump, Doctor. You're not really prepared to trade your life for the sake of a theory? If you'd only see reason... none of us need die. The only casualties need be the Karalian invaders. Come back inside and we can talk about this over a cup of tea." 

Luthen was jolted by her reference to destroying the invasion fleet, jolted again when he registered how Verani had addressed the man. Doctor... Luthen stared at the figure Jovanka had pointed out from the hilltop two days ago. There was no sign of Jovanka herself, or the other girl; he wondered where they were, hoped it wasn't already too late. The Doctor's plight looked like a diversionary tactic, but still... he didn't look very safe up there. Even as Luthen watched, the Doctor's balance faltered, one foot slipping over the edge, and he clutched frantically, arms flying out in windmilling circles as he tried to catch a hold and only displaced roof tiles. Several of the tiles cascaded down, and a series of splintering sounds echoed back up from the ground. 

It would be quicker, Luthen thought, to warn the Doctor about what was going to happen to Jovanka, rather than trying to find her himself when he knew so little of the city and its layout. She could be anywhere. Maybe the Doctor already knew where she was. He made his decision, aware with a kind of hollow despair that it might lead him back into Kweril's clutches, later. But he recalled the way Jovanka had spoken of the Doctor, the respect bordering on awe she had concealed beneath her flippancy. He was probably their best chance at this stage, and Luthen owed her a debt he was desperate to somehow repay. 

He drew himself back inside the window, and was made painfully aware of the strain leaning out so far had put upon his arched back. Another ache for his collection. He forced it to the back of his mind as he ventured deeper inside the council building, searching for stairs to the upper floors. 

* * *

The Doctor clung to the slope of the rooftop, arms splayed out, his shoulders pressing against the tiles whose corners dug viciously into his skin. His hands were slicked with blood, shredded by the sharp edges, and they drew dark patterns when he shifted his grip. But there was nothing to hold onto except the loose, unstable tiles, and they cascaded from the roof to shatter far below if he tried to put too much weight on them. 

The near fall had shaken his resolve. It was one thing to risk his life for the odd hopeless cause, but another entirely to deliberately and knowingly discard it. Yet it seemed the only option left. Verani had seen to it that his choices were limited to helping the Janovians or death. He was only anticipating the eventual effects of Verani's poison, except that this way dispensed of any opportunity for him to be compelled to change his mind out of either threat or pity. 

Janovay's timeline depended upon his death here and now. If what he suspected about the Janovians themselves was true, that only compounded the issue. Their existence was a paradox in itself. Their _continued_ existence into the future of a universe never meant for them... well, who knew what disastrous effect that might have, how many elaborate knots it would tie into the course of future history? 

He was fairly sure the only reason their idyllic existence on Janovay for thousands of years had been permitted or possible was because it was destined to come to a thorough end at a solidly predetermined time. 

If he was going to jump, now was the moment. He shifted his stance, heels braced against the gutter, trying to fight the illogical impulse to move carefully when, really, it was immaterial. 

"No!" screamed Verani, from the window below, as she finally understood he was going to do it. She wailed incoherent promises about how she would not try to coerce him into helping them if he came down, but he couldn't trust her. He already knew the survival of her race meant considerably more to her than her integrity. 

He noticed that she'd leaned right out of the window, her arms outstretched. If he jumped, she clearly intended to try to catch hold of him as he fell past her, which would undoubtedly overbalance her and drag her down with him. 

But... now was the time. And, he reminded himself sternly, Verani was already dead. Twice over. Poisoned. Buried beneath several millennia of past. If she wanted to anticipate her demise by a few days, that was up to her. 

He heard something shift behind and above him but, wedged as he was with his back pressed hard against the angle of the roof, he couldn't turn around to see. They must have sent someone to fetch him in. No more time to waste. 

"I'm sorry," he said to Verani, sincerely. But still he took a deep breath... 

...And a step forward into nothing. 

* * *

Luthen's searching brought him eventually to a guest chamber with a small window cut into its angled ceiling. He put the glass through using his immobile arm as a club, and smashed away all the little shards that lingered around the edges. He tore sheets from the bed into thin strips, tied them together, and knotted one end around one of the bed's thick, wooden legs and the other around his cybernetic ankle. 

Tying knots one-handed was no joke. He cursed as he tried to hurry the process. 

He hauled a small table underneath the window and awkwardly climbed up and out, onto the unstable tiles. The highest point of the roof was a few metres above him. From his calculations, the Doctor should be just over the other side. 

Tiles moved beneath his foot, cracking and skidding down, too fragile for his heavy cybernetics. He gripped, one-handed, eyes shut, cursing, terrified. He didn't want to do this. But Jovanka had died for him, and _she_ probably hadn't wanted to do _that_. He shouldn't fall if the knots he'd tied held. No, he'd probably only be smashed to pieces as his improvised rope sent him crashing against the side of the building. 

Verani's scream forced him into action and he disregarded his own fears and scrambled up the slope of the roof. 

* * *

A hand like a vice closed around the Doctor's trailing wrist. 

There was a brief, dizzying instant when he thought his arm was going to be pulled out of its socket, and another when it seemed whoever had caught him was going to be dragged down after him. 

Then, he was held suspended over the empty air by his wrist, looking up dazedly into the pale, frightened face of a young man he'd never seen before. 

* * *

Luthen grit his teeth as the Doctor's weight dragged him further down the roof. His head and shoulders now hung out over the edge, and the sharp corner of the gutter sawed into his right shoulder as the weight on his arm forced it down. Blood crept down his sleeve to slick his grip on the Doctor's wrist. 

The alien man's drawn face stared up at him, lined with pain and confusion and a crazy desperation. Luthen's tenuous grasp was the only thing currently extending his life, but his expression had nothing of gratitude. If anything, he looked annoyed. 

"Young man," he said, with difficulty. "Although I have to admire your heroic intentions, this really has nothing to do with you. Would you please desist this interference and let go of my arm!" 

Luthen, dragged a little further off the roof by the Doctor's weight, blinked in the face of the distance spinning below and jammed his mechanical arm into the gap left by several fallen roof tiles, twisting it until it was wedged solidly in place. He felt the strain at the point where the artificial limb joined his shoulder, and hoped it wouldn't prove too much for the joint. He didn't want to think about the ugly possibility of the mechanical arm tearing away to leave only a bloody hole in his shoulder. 

The Doctor appeared to have noticed Luthen's cybernetics for the first time. His eyes widened, irritation dispersing. "Karalian?" 

Luthen nodded, although he wasn't quite sure of the significance. He wished Jovanka had explained more to him of events on Janovay, but then they'd both been rather distracted and short on patience. "I'm going to pull you up," he said, relieved that the man's reluctance to be saved had dispersed. "Hang on." 

"There's not much else I can do." The Doctor's face broke into an inexplicable grin. As Luthen hauled awkwardly, one-handed, the Doctor reached up his free hand and caught the edge of the gutter. No, thought Luthen. He didn't fall, he was jumping. He meant to die. _Why does my appearance make a difference?_

"You're here early!" The Doctor's tone managed to be both relieved and grim. "I though the invasion force wasn't due for another day or so at least." 

There was no chance to explain. Verani's demanding voice rang out from below, echoing off the walls, hollow in the night air. "What is happening up there? Doctor?" 

Luthen discovered he lacked the leverage to pull the Doctor back onto the roof. Miserably, he called down to the woman, "Councillor Verani? I've got hold of him, but I can't pull him back to safety. Can you send someone to help?" 

The Doctor's head snapped up, and he pinned Luthen with a hard, intense glare. "You know her. You're not-" He began struggling again, and the hand clasped around the edge of the gutter loosed its grip. 

"Who is that?" Verani asked, while Luthen struggled with the sudden increase in weight. "The _Karalian_?" 

"Yes, ma'am. Please hurry. Doctor, stop!" Though he was still anchored, his lower body slid down the roof until he lay horizontally against the gutter, close to being pulled over the edge, his cybernetic arm twisted almost intolerably. 

"Let go," the Doctor said, his voice rising desperately, almost pleading. "I may have to die but I don't want to take you with me!" 

"It's not just me you'll take with you!" Luthen yelled. "Your friend, Jovanka. I saw her die! Yesterday! Today she's still alive - so far. You're the only one who can stop it from happening! You have to listen to me..." 

The Doctor's struggles stilled again. His free hand crept back to curl bloodily around the gutter, and he hauled himself higher with an impossible strength, bringing his face inches from Luthen's. "What did you say?" 

Before Luthen could respond, something brushed past his arm, and a length of rope slapped down onto the tiles. He craned his neck around to see shadowy Janovian figures higher up the roof, waiting to haul them both back to safety. 

* * *

"This place is even more creepy in the dark," Tegan said, trying to suppress the tremor in her voice. She blindly ran her hands over the smooth wall at the top of the vault's long, narrow metal staircase, searching for the switch. Nyssa's formula was spinning dizzily around in her head, her mind unable to stop repeating it, again and again like a stuck record, because the Doctor's life depended upon her remembering it. Her heels skidded on the metal of the stairway and she was terrified of slipping, hurtling down the dratted stairs in the dark. 

"Try to keep calm." Nyssa's silhouetted figure knelt outside the hatch, framed by the Janovian night sky no less dark than her shadow but distinguishable by its scattered cascade of tiny stars. "The only thing here that can harm us is our own panic. If you keep calm, there's no danger of stumbling and falling." 

"I know, I know," Tegan grumbled. Sometimes, she wondered if Nyssa had been rather anaesthetised to danger by the things she'd been through before Tegan really knew her. Or maybe it was some hippy alien peace-with-the-universe kind of thing; Traken sounded like it might've been a bit like that, from what she'd heard. "Nothing down here but a load of old junk. Not even any spiders." It didn't help. The future was down there - and the past, she supposed - and who knew what she could be heading towards. If things went wrong, where would that leave her? Stranded at the beginning of Janovay's evolution with only a bunch of bacteria for company, that was where. If she was _lucky_. 

Her fingers finally caught the switch, and she flicked it down. Light washed around them, outlining the dark gap where the square hatch opened up onto the night, illuminating Nyssa's worried face with merciless harsh edges to age her ten years or more. Below them, beyond a stretch of lit stairway, more darkness squatted ominously. 

The light didn't help. Tegan felt worse than ever. The faint trembling in her limbs ever since their easy escape increased. She couldn't silence the corner of her brain that insisted on repeating Nyssa's formula constantly. She felt sick. 

She helped Nyssa climb down onto the stairway. Nyssa gripped her arm in what was probably intended to be a comforting gesture as they began to descend into the vaults, but the unnecessary vice-like tightness of the grip informed Tegan - rather painfully - that she was not the only one who was stressed. 

* * *

The two Janovians lowered Luthen back down through the rooflight, retaining their grip on each of his arms until his feet touched the floor, when they released him with a kind of detached care. His cybernetic arm dropped uselessly to his side, dragging at his shoulder. He stretched the other to ease the ache from its muscles. The Janovians seemed indifferent to his all-too-obvious race, an extreme contrast to Kweril's unreasoning hatred. 

He picked at the improvised sheet rope still firmly attached to his ankle as the Janovians pulled the Doctor inside. It occurred to him that if he ran now, before Verani and perhaps Kweril arrived, it might be possible to escape. He could stay out of sight until the fleet came. But... had he told the Doctor enough? Could he help Jovanka, if Luthen fled now, without further explanation? 

He couldn't risk Jovanka's life on his ignorance. His feet rooted themselves to the floor, giving the rest of him no choice but to stay. 

He threw the mess of torn sheets back onto the room's single little bed, and moved clear as the Doctor, shrugging off the Janovians' aid with brisk politeness, grasped the sides of the rooflight's frame in his tattered hands and swung down incautiously into the room. He staggered as he landed, and Luthen caught hold of his arm. 

The Doctor's hands had left bright smears of blood adorning the window frame. He said, "Thank you," absently, and brushed down his beige coat, not appearing to notice that all this gesture achieved was to streak red across the pale material. He wasn't looking at Luthen, but seemed distracted. Thinking, Luthen decided. Thinking very hard. 

As the Janovians climbed in, the Doctor seemed to pull his thoughts together. He straightened, weariness falling from him, and directed at Luthen a penetrating stare somehow both interrogative and sympathetic. "Young man. I hope what you have to say is significant. The temporal balance of the universe itself may have been placed in jeopardy by your interference." 

Luthen blinked. All he'd done was save a man's life. "I don't understand what you mean. All I know is that you might have the knowledge to save Jovanka. I had to save you to help her." 

"Tegan!" he seized on the name. "You said she was in danger?" 

"I said she was _dead_!" The Janovians in the background looked mystified, and Luthen thought, looking at the Doctor's expression, that that made four of them. 

"Dead? Tegan?" the Doctor repeated softly in a puzzled, fragile voice. "No, no. She can't be. I only saw her about an hour ago." 

Luthen added quickly, "She's not dead yet. I saw her die two days ago, but here and now it hasn't happened yet. We can still save her! We have to find her - her and the other woman, they're going to try something with some sort of... of time device, and it's going to go wrong. We have to stop them before it's too late!" 

The explanation didn't comfort the Doctor very much. He'd paled further still, as though something had just clicked inside his head and it appalled him. Luthen remembered Jovanka talking about paradoxes, and changing the past, and a weight seemed to compress his chest, making his breathing difficult. "You can do something, can't you?" 

But the Doctor's expression was shattered. He closed his eyes in what seemed a deliberate exercise to regain his calm. When he opened them again he looked resigned, and no less bleak. "You'd better explain it to me from the beginning," he said, in a soft, insistent voice that brooked no argument. 

* * *

The Doctor listened intently to Luthen's tale, wanting to hear what the Karalian had to say before Verani arrived to complicate matters all the more. 

The fact the youth didn't understand the events he was describing didn't make for much clarity in his account, but the Doctor could fill in the gaps well enough. When he'd given them cover for their escape, Tegan and Nyssa had gone straight to the time machine in the vaults. Tegan would go back in time, and Luthen would meet her, and he would see her die - all within hours of their initial arrival on Janovay. 

Except it hadn't happened yet, and didn't have to happen now. Luthen had opened up the pathway to a choice. One he wasn't allowed to take. One he'd already refused to take for the sake of a people. One he'd already refused, too, to take for a single person. 

He listened with a rising feeling of numbness to Luthen trying to repeat verbatim what 'Jovanka' had given him in lieu of reasonable explanation. Tegan obviously hadn't understood a great deal about what was going on either. The Doctor tried to keep his grief at Tegan's fate locked to the back of his mind. The Karalian's tale was confused. They knew so little about what had really happened. They knew so little about the technology involved. Anything was possible. He should not grieve until he knew for sure. Should not contemplate any foolish acts. 

Sensible objectivity was not so easily put into practice. He'd never been especially good at it. Adric's death was still a raw wound in his memory. 

He studied Luthen. The young man couldn't have been more than twenty, but the presence of his artificial limbs demonstrated suffering disproportionate to his short life. He made the Doctor decidedly uneasy. This was not what he had expected of the notorious killing machines of the Karalian Union. He'd anticipated something machine-like and soulless, a Cyberman by any other name. Luthen, though, was clearly not a product of a uniform society. Not a small machine part of a larger machine, but a random, flawed individual like most humanoid cultures produced. And random limb replacement as opposed to cybernetic enhancements by obvious overall design, did not suggest that Karalian cybernetics had arisen through deliberate choice on their part, but suggested a cause beyond their control. Karalian cybernetics, the Doctor mused, were a symptom, or perhaps a cure - but they were not a self imposed, supposedly self-improving, disease. 

This particular Karalian cyborg looked unsteady on his feet and, to the Doctor's eyes, was suffering from shock and exhaustion, though the youth might act like those things didn't exist. Some of his cybernetic parts rather obviously weren't working properly. 

Luthen rushed through his escape from Kweril and his antics on the roof, and finished, "We're wasting time. We have to go, now! If we hurry we might yet be able to stop them." 

The Doctor glanced at the two Janovians and knew they would do nothing to prevent their leaving. He hesitated, remembering his protestations to Verani about the timeline, to Nyssa and Tegan when Adric... This wasn't quite the same situation. He hadn't seen it with his own eyes. The temporal device was an unknown and erratic piece of technology. 

Luthen's expression in the face of his hesitation was shocked betrayal. 

"If you won't go, I will!" the Karalian snapped. He got to the door before turning back, with baffled helplessness. "Where is the time device? Jovanka said something about vaults-" 

The Doctor made his decision. "You're quite right. We're wasting time here. Come along. I'll explain everything on the way." 

He marched past Luthen, flung the door wide, and walked over the threshold and straight into Verani. 

* * *

"Where do you think you're going?" The First Councillor extended both arms full out to block the corridor. Kweril and Crivthen hovered behind her, the Mirosan looking as though her authority was the only thing restraining him from attacking Luthen on the spot. 

"Verani," the Doctor said. "We really don't have time for this. This is a life and death situation. We need to get to the vaults right away." 

"Unnecessary," she responded. "I've already sent people to bring back your two companions. You can set your mind at rest, Doctor. They'll be returned here safely. Bannot will take care of that." 

The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief but his irritation with her seemed to intensify. He said, "What's all this about, anyway, Verani? I heard what you said out there. No more coercion. You seem to have forgotten it very quickly, for someone with such a unique memory. And I have a bone to pick with you about this young man here. You knew about him. You _knew. This_ is your average Karalian soldier, and you wanted me to _destroy them all for you_?" His words trailed away, swallowed up by fury. 

Verani frowned, but the Doctor must have hit at least one nerve, because she lowered her arms and took a step away from him as though to emphasize his freedom. Inadvertently, this also opened the way for Kweril, who overcame his restraint and launched himself forward. Luthen had been watching for any such move, but still Verani acted before he did. Her arm rose to block Kweril's path, and he grunted and fell back as her slim wrist caught him across the neck. 

Verani neither flinched nor made any sound of pain. "You," she said, and there was something frightening and authoritative in her voice as she turned her hard gaze on the Mirosan, "Have been given far too much rein here already. You will not attempt to do any further harm while you remain on this planet." Kweril quailed beneath her stare, and Luthen couldn't see how anyone could dare disobey the intellect behind her eyes. She turned them upon him as he watched. 

"I owe you a debt of gratitude and an apology which words can never express," she said as he wondered if he'd be able to run fast or far enough to escape that gaze. "I should not have allowed the things Kweril did. I was led by desperation, and it blinded me to cruelty." She bowed her head to him. 

He stammered, taken aback, "Ma'am... I'm the enemy. We're at war. You owe me nothing! My people-" 

She said, intensely, "You saved the Doctor. My madness almost killed him. I almost caused a death. I almost caused a thousand deaths. I would have killed all the Karalians I could. Used all the weapons I could. If we were capable of that, what would be the point in our survival?" 

The Doctor had been quiet, either listening or thinking. He said, suddenly, "I'm very glad you've had a change of heart, Verani, but I think we have other problems. Tegan and Nyssa. You say you sent Bannot after them?" 

She nodded. 

"But, don't you see, Bannot's had no contact with Luthen, he doesn't know what we know! Something happened to make their plan go wrong. Tegan was stranded in the past because Nyssa wasn't there to help bring her back and she couldn't operate the device alone. They were _interrupted_. They were interrupted by Bannot when Nyssa was trying to operate the temporal device! Bannot's intrusion is going to _cause_ their plan to fail! To cause Tegan's death!" 

He tried to push Verani out of the way. Luthen leaped past while she was distracted, but Kweril was behind her and floored him with a snarl and a trip that knocked his legs from under him. He crashed to the floor, adding more bruises on top of his bruises. A dizzy glance over his shoulder told him the Doctor was having no more luck against Verani. Their struggle was more civilised; they stood facing each other, eyes inches apart, the air all but crackling between them. 

"No, Doctor," Verani said. "It's too late. It's already happened. Her fate is sealed, isn't that so? Just like ours. I can't let you put the timeline in danger for the sake of a single life, can I?" She smiled, and the Doctor looked stricken. 

Luthen cast a grateful glance to Crivthen as the old man hauled Kweril off him, then pulled the gun from his belt and fired a bolt of energy at the wall next to Verani's head. Everyone stilled except Verani, who calmly turned around. 

"We're going to help Jovanka," Luthen barked, struggling to his feet. "Just because I don't want to hurt anyone doesn't mean I won't if I have to. Doctor, come on. We have to go _now_!" 

But the Doctor shook his head. "No, Luthen. She's right. It's already too late. Violence is pointless at this stage. We have to let events run their course. If Tegan hadn't met you in the past, you wouldn't have met me to tell me, and nobody would have been here to go back and help Tegan. It's a paradox, and we can't do it. I'm sorry. And anyway," he breathed, "If the temporal distortion I'm sensing is any indication, they've already activated the device." 

How he knew that, Luthen couldn't imagine, but then the man was an alien. Without the Doctor's support, he felt his own resolve crumbling. Alone, and out of his depth, how could he stand up to them all? Crivthen. Kweril. Verani. The Doctor... He threw the gun down, and slumped heavily to the floor. 

"Why are you apologising to me?" he asked. "I only knew her for a day or so. She was _your_ friend." 

* * *

Thin-lipped, her face drawn and pale, Nyssa went over the machine in silence, her hands running lightly across the controls as though the contact might help her to understand them better. Her expression was of deep concentration. Eventually, she said, "I think I have it. From what the Doctor told me, and what I know of the components, it seems to work a little like a transmat capsule, with many of the same basic mechanisms. In fact, parts of it may once have been a transmat capsule - it looks as though it was improvised from a number of separate systems. Of course, this device will transport you to a different temporal location, rather than a different spatial one." 

Tegan opened her mouth to protest that since she didn't understand the scientific stuff anyway, Nyssa's explaining it wasn't a lot of use, but then realisation dawned that Nyssa's monologue wasn't for her benefit, but rather a clarification of her ideas by voicing them, and she snapped her mouth shut again. 

"As far as I can gather," Nyssa continued uncertainly, "The device anchors the body of its operator and sends them to a different time. I'm not sure how that works. What is certain is that you have to return here, and probably soon. It could be very dangerous for you to use the device for too long. It must put a considerable strain upon the operator, and even more so if they're not a time sensitive." 

"So you'll have to bring me back after a few hours, then," Tegan filled in, liking this idea less and less. "Say, is the time you experience waiting here going to be the same as passes for me, in the machine?" 

"That's a good question." After some thought, Nyssa nodded. "Yes... yes, it should be. We'll have to agree upon a time. I think two hours would have to be the limit. Will that be enough to get to the TARDIS, mix the formula, and make the substitution?" 

Tegan shook her head doubtfully. 

"Possibly not," Nyssa agreed. "But since I don't know if I can even bring you back, or how long it might take, I'd be unwilling to risk much more than that. And, remember, we don't know how long it will be before the Janovians think to come looking for us down here." 

"We could do a test run," Tegan suggested. "Send me for a short trip first, and start trying to bring me back at once. If you have problems, well, I'll try to get to the TARDIS anyway, and see how much I can get done in the time it takes you to figure things out. Maybe I'd have chance to finish the formula, even to get it back to the city. If everything runs smooth you can send me back to complete the job knowing exactly what you're doing." 

Nyssa nodded slowly, apparently satisfied with the more cautious approach. "And I would know how to bring you back quickly if any of the Janovians show up." She crossed over to one of the capsules and said, "You need to be in here." 

Feeling uncomfortably like some sort of sacrifice, Tegan climbed awkwardly into the grasp of the machine. The capsule's narrow confines made her feel claustrophobic. 

"You'll feel a slight pressure on the back of your skull as the headset falls into place," Nyssa warned, reaching up for the helmet device, but before her hands were anywhere near it an electronic whir sounded close to Tegan's ears. 

She sensed the automated motion of machinery close above her head, and bit her lip as the tickling sensation at the back of her skull and neck recalled to mind in unwanted detail the needle-thin spiky filaments adorning the inside of the headset. It didn't hurt, but it was just as well the constricting space of the capsule almost totally immobilised her as the itching sensations drove deep into her brain. She screwed up her face, glad she couldn't see what was happening, and clamped her lips closed on a whimper. 

"Don't worry about the filaments," Nyssa advised, wincing in sympathy. She looked strained and worried and, Tegan reflected, she wasn't the one with bloody needles sticking into her head. "If you were a time-sensitive they'd allow you to tap directly into the temporal device and give you a lot more control from the inside. As it is, and with me here to operate the controls, I'm not sure how necessary they are. They're quite harmless, though. They're far too fine to cause any damage." 

"R-right." Tegan crossed her eyes in an attempt to see the headset now firmly settled upon her brow. "Harmless. Yeah." Thinking that if she ever got out of this alive she was going to get really, really drunk. 

"All right," Nyssa said quietly, backing over to one of the control consoles. "Ready?" 

_No!_ her mind screamed, but her mouth betrayed her, as it often did, and was saying "Yes" before her brain could stop it. She spouted Nyssa's formula aloud for one final check, and the Trakenite nodded approval. Tegan regretted the lack of any glaring errors which might have worked to postpone the ordeal a little longer, but reminded herself sternly that this was the Doctor's only chance of life. Nyssa's too, since she would clearly rather die with him than leave Janovay without him. 

"I'll see you soon," she said. "We'll go shopping in London when this is all over. There's this place called Harrods I really have to introduce you to. We'll run up the most astronomical bills the galaxy has ever seen on the Doctor's credit cards, 'cause he'll sure owe us for this one. You'll see." She grinned, trying to hold back the moisture at the corners of her eyes. 

Nyssa's smile was shaky, but her hands were sure as she leaned over the control console and pulled a series of levers. 

In the blink of an eye, Tegan Jovanka's reality burst apart... 

* * *

...time shattered into so much jagged confetti... 

* * *

...and in that instant, and three days ago, the energies tapped by the device tangled around a helpless humanoid body flung into the vortex by a spaceship drive malfunction, in the moment before death... 

* * *

...and the TARDIS, plucked from its course by the random energy fluctuations, materialised on Janovay. 

_End of Part 2_


	3. Killing Time

DISCLAIMER: All Doctor Who characters and concepts belong to the BBC. The ones you don't recognise are mine. Especially Verani. No profit, just borrowing, yadda, yadda, yadda. 

* * *

**

Doctor Who: Janovay

**

_Part 3. Killing Time_

Chapter 9 

In the coffin-like capsule Tegan tensed, her muscles taut and her face contorted as though in pain. Then she fell into a deathly stillness, and it frightened Nyssa until she realised the device probably slowed its user's breathing to the point of imperceptibility. 

She felt the silence descend around her, felt the vast distance which stretched above her head; the echoing empty space of the vaults, all that weight of ground between herself and the surface of Janovay. For once the sound of Tegan's voice was more conspicuous in its absence. 

Nyssa was seized by a conviction she wouldn't hear that caustic Australian voice again. She smothered her panic with the same rational logic she'd earlier used to calm her friend - panic increased the likelihood of error, and she could not allow her efficiency to be reduced when she had to determine how to bring Tegan back. 

She carefully thought through each step in the operation of the temporal device before she touched anything, re-checking the logic of her guesses. She manipulated the controls with calm, measured movements, stilling the shaking of her hands by force of will. Finally, her hand hovered over the lever once more. "Please," she whispered to the air, and regretted it as the echo bounced the sound back at her from a multitude of directions. She pulled the lever. 

When she dared look to the still figure in the capsule, nothing had changed. 

Tegan's face was pale, features sculpted in marble; eyes closed, lips held together slackly in a slight frown. A few straggling locks of dark hair stuck out from the head-set. Her body was relaxed from the tightly-wound, aggressive tension which regularly motivated it. 

She looked as though she was dead already. 

Nyssa stared around the array of controls, feeling panic rise up again. It was harder to retain her control, this time. The responsibility for Tegan's life lay in her hands. It had been her plan, after all. She didn't think she could cope if she had inadvertently killed her friend. 

If she could only have taken the risk herself she would have done so far more willingly than sending Tegan, who had a life and a home to go back to some day. Despite knowing that it had been the only way, she still felt guilty that all the risk had fallen to Tegan. 

She forced her thoughts back to the device; back to square one. Where had she gone wrong? 

Nyssa was so wrapped up in her calculations that she only became aware of the presence of others in the Vaults as they stepped off the stairs onto the metal floor. The echo reverberated through the panel her hands rested on, jolting through her fingers, breaking her concentration. 

Hearing footsteps and voices, she backed against the wall out of sight and edged quietly over to the door. One of the voices sounded like Councillor Bannot's. She peered into the main storage chamber, and saw three Janovian figures halted in the central circle, looking around. 

One of the people they'd passed on their way to the vaults must have reported them, and so Verani had sent her faithful henchman to bring them back. The lights she and Tegan had switched on coming down had led the Janovians right to them. 

Nyssa could hardly deal with three of them. Even had she been prepared to use them, the guns in the vaults were on one of the upper floors, well out of her reach, and everything on this lowest level was of a far more dramatic scale, no use to her in this situation. If she couldn't overpower them, what other choices did that leave her? 

She could run, draw them away from the device - that would mean leaving Tegan, risking the possibility she wouldn't be able to come back later, but at least the Doctor would have a chance. 

Her other option would be to keep trying. To bring Tegan back before the Janovians found them, and give up hope for the Doctor. 

Her thoughts rebelled against that. Yet... she could not ask Tegan to gamble her life on such a slim chance. The plan had seemed comparatively safe before, but what she now proposed was far more likely to lose both than save both. No, she decided with a heavy heart. They had tried, but she had to know when to stop. She would save the friend she knew could be saved, and face the consequences. There might be other chances for the Doctor, later. 

She resumed her work as quickly and quietly as possible, desperately stretching her brain to interpret the unfamiliar technology, her guesses growing wilder and more uncertain with each failure. 

But fifteen minutes later when they finally found her, she had still not succeeded. 

* * *

The Doctor squinted morosely into the tea-leaf patterned depths of his empty teacup, not seeing any future there at all. Around him, the extraordinary colours of Janovay's sunrise flooded through the window to fill the room with light. The brightness was depressing; he idly wished for clouds as a match for his mood. 

The light fluctuated as Verani paced the length of the small, pleasant room, and her shadow aped her, flitting restlessly across the patches cast on the floor by the rising sun. 

The Doctor leaned forward to place the empty cup onto a small table, and the movement awoke the aches in his arms and shoulders. The legacy of his exertions on the roof, all pointless now. Although his plan had worked after a fashion and Verani had given up her efforts to make him save Janovay, his preoccupation with the larger issues had lost him Tegan. There was no victory. He'd known Tegan and Nyssa were planning something; should never have let them out of his sight. He'd dragged them into this. Their lives were his responsibility. 

His hands had left bloody fingerprints behind on the teacup. He couldn't help but remember Verani's addictive poison - it was nearly time for the next dose, and the jangling clamour of his outraged nervous system yelled it insistently at him. 

Verani cast a veiled glance his way and left off her pacing. She strode to the door, pulled it open, and said tersely to the Janovian menial outside, "Fetch the zayol from my chambers." 

The Karalian youth, Luthen, looked up. He had been told about the poison and it had shocked him visibly, which the Doctor had thought an interesting reaction from a career killer. He didn't think Luthen had been a soldier for very long. The youth's single working hand was clutched whitely around his cup, and the tea within had been suspiciously sniffed at before being swallowed with a vigour that suggested he'd had neither food or drink for some time. His hand shook slightly - a mixture of frustrated tension and nervous exhaustion, the Doctor imagined. He made a mental note to keep a close watch on Luthen. 

The other occupant of the room was Councillor Crivthen, who rested calmly in a vast armchair, sipping at tea, eyes flickering occasionally around his less serene companions. Kweril had returned to the labs, to the all-too-obvious relief of the Karalian. 

They were waiting for news. For Bannot's return. There hadn't seemed to be anything else to do. The Doctor's nerves gnawed at him to do something, anything - he wasn't used to inactivity being the only option. But he was a Time Lord, and history was being made here. He _could not_ let himself become an influence to change post-determined events. He kept his nerves tightly under control. 

The menial returned with the poison. Verani poured two glasses from the jug, handed one to the Doctor and kept the other herself. She sipped at hers. The Doctor distastefully gulped his down and set the empty glass out of sight on the floor beneath his chair. 

"Your hands should have medical attention," Verani remarked. "And you, Luthen, you need food, rest - and medical care for your arm." 

Luthen regarded the blood on his uniform shoulder with faint surprise. He'd clearly forgotten about the cut - the Doctor felt guilty about the injury, but there were plenty of worse mistakes he'd made to diminish it to a very little guilt. "It's nothing," the Karalian said. "I can hardly feel it." 

Verani nodded. "I heard the Karalian are immune to pain. I wasn't sure it was true." 

The Doctor glanced at her with suspicion, concerned she was continuing with her 'studies' of the enemy, but it seemed her remark was innocent enough. He shifted his attention to Luthen, quite certain that Verani's supposition was _not_ true. Such a degree of control over the nervous system seemed an unlikely feature of a race physiologically so close to human as the Karalian. More likely, it was nothing more than an unwillingness to admit pain, practiced by any number of aggressive and ritualistic warrior races. 

He did not have chance to question Luthen about the matter. Even as he opened his mouth to speak, the door was flung open by a breathless Janovian who skidded to a halt in front of Verani, face stretched in fear. It was the most emotion he'd seen any of these people display - but, well, however rigid a people's mental discipline, true colours showed in a crisis. The Janovians were living, feeling beings, not quite the machine-like ciphers they appeared. 

"The Karalians!" the Janovian gasped. "They've been sighted from the tower." 

Verani's face wiped blank of expression. "Go to Kweril in his laboratory and tell him they are here. Extend to him our gratitude. Tell him to take his ship and leave while he can." 

"If he has a ship, can't he take some of you with him?" Luthen asked, then shrank back as though he regretted his interruption. 

Verani looked at him with a trace of sympathy. "His ship is only large enough for a handful of people. Who would go? Who would stay? Besides, this is all Karalian space now. There is only a slim chance he might reach safety somewhere." 

The Karalian youth lowered his guilty eyes. The Doctor, who'd stood at the arrival of the menial, placed a hand on his shoulder in a gesture of comfort Luthen seemed to badly need. "It's not your fault. No use blaming yourself." 

Verani turned to Crivthen. "Gather together the people and tell them, my friend. You comfort them more than I. I..." She glanced glassy-eyed out of the window, at the empty sky. "I will go to the Watch-tower. To watch." Her gaze shifted onto Luthen and the Doctor, participants in Janovay's inevitable destruction by race and by inaction. "You two come with me." 

It was a request neither of them could in conscience refuse. 

* * *

Bannot was beginning to think the lighted vaults were nothing more than a decoy when he reached the gap in the wall and incautiously looked in. Within, the girl Nyssa, unaware of his presence, worked upon the machinery that filled the side room, her small hands flying over the controls. With alarm he saw that the other young woman, Tegan, was actually inside the machine. 

"What are you doing? Is she all right in there?" 

Nyssa jumped at the sound of his voice and spun around to fix him with a haughty, frightened glare. "She's fine. At least - I hope she is. I'm trying to make the device let go of her. Please let me finish and bring her back. We'll come quietly. We were trying to use this machine to help the Doctor, but it's no use." 

Bannot regarded the jumble of loose machinery that sprawled across the room. If he were Verani, he thought, all this might mean something, might pick knowledge from some hidden part of his brain. But as it was, he understood nothing of it. Obviously Nyssa understood to some degree. As he watched, she spun around and impulsively pulled a lever before he could object. 

Nothing happened. She stared ruefully at the control panel and shook her head. "Wrong again." 

Maybe she understood rather less than he'd thought. "What is all this?" he asked, curious despite himself. No Janovian understood technology; it was forbidden to explore any advances in their fixed ways of living. But he'd often... _wondered_. 

"It's a time machine. Unfortunately it isn't a very good one. And I don't have much knowledge of this kind of technology. But it worked when I sent her... I have to get her back." Her hands were clenched, knuckles white with strain. 

He nodded. "I'll give you some more time." He didn't see what harm it could do, and couldn't very well leave the other girl trapped. "You will come back with me once you succeed?" 

"Yes. I promise I will. Thank you. But now I... need to concentrate. Please." 

Bannot would have preferred to watch her work, but he could see her point. The safety of the other girl depended upon her concentration. He went to wait in the main chamber. 

He instructed his fellows to return to Verani and report that he would bring the two alien females back presently, and she should concern herself no more on the issue. Then, he stood leaning against the wall, studying the machines stretched out in their endless rows. 

He had not been waiting long when he noticed the low thrumming from above. The sound was quiet at first, but grew steadily louder. In seconds it was a roar and the vaults were shaking with it, infinitesimal tremors running through the walls and floor. He stepped away from the wall, staggering as the faint motion confused his balance. 

Nyssa ran out of the side room and skidded to a halt when she saw him. "What's happening? That sounds like an engine of some kind... a ship's drive..." 

"Kweril is the only person on Janovay with a starship, and it is a small vessel. I'm sure it couldn't be responsible for this." Bannot looked around, confused as she was, but cut off from the outside world by unmeasured depth there was no way to determine what was happening. The shuddering was still increasing - whatever was causing the ground to tremble, it was possible the underground structure of the vaults wasn't stable enough to withstand it. "We should get out of here. It may not be safe." 

"No! Tegan's still in there. You said you'd give me time... I can't leave her!" 

"You must. For all we know the vaults could come down on top of us. I'm sure your friend wouldn't want you to die with her. If everything seems safe, I promise I'll bring you back later. I don't want her to die any more than you do. But your life is important too, Nyssa. Come with me, please." 

"I'm staying," she said, her face white, her eyes huge and dark and determined. "I can't let Tegan down." She ran back into the side room before he could stop her and scrabbled at the wall to the side of the opening. She was too slow to shut him out. Bannot was already inside the by the time the wall had begun to close up and it did not take much strength to eject the slight girl from the room. A shove sent her sprawling through the closing gap, tripping and falling to her knees on the floor, and he ducked out after her just before the edges sealed shut. 

"Later," he said firmly, taking her hands and pulling her up. "Think about it sensibly. When we find out what the disturbance is, and if the vaults are still intact when it stops, we'll come back. Please. I'd rather not force you to leave, but I would do so rather than allow you to endanger yourself." 

She glared at him as the roaring changed pitch and grew louder than ever. She was very young, Bannot thought tolerantly - genuinely young since her people, as he understood it, had only the one life, and so she was exactly as old as she appeared. Her anger lasted for only a moment. She had a good command of logic. Her only chance had already passed and there were no other options left. She nodded and said tersely, "All right." 

The floor jumped suddenly underfoot and some of the stored items cascaded down from their neat piles with echoing crashes. Nyssa went very pale. She grabbed hold of his arm and started dragging him towards the stairs. "We have to get out of here! If there are active power cells in any of those, we're dead!" 

Bannot might not understand the language, but he agreed with the general proposal. They dashed for the stairs, dodging around precariously leaning piles and the occasional plummeting machine. 

* * *

Verani stood, straight and poised, in the watch-room of the tower. She stared fixedly, not at the screen in the ceiling that mapped Janovay's skies and the Karalian fleet that glittered as dots not yet discernable from the stars, but out across the rolling blue-green countryside of Janovay, a world more beautiful than most. 

To the Doctor, her silent despair was an accusation. He hadn't helped them. He'd gone out of his way to avoid doing so. Maybe to be waiting with her, with the bright dots of the Karalian fleet above his head, was nothing more than justice. He turned away from Verani and descended the upper steps of the staircase to see how Luthen was doing. The old joke about Daleks and stairs seemed to be almost as valid for Karalians. 

"I'm all right!" Luthen yelled, with a trace of irritation, before the Doctor could ask. He was several steps below, clumsily hauling his cybernetic leg, every step a challenge in its own right. Nonetheless, the Doctor went to help him scale the remaining distance, and they sat down to rest on the top step. 

Once Luthen had recovered from the climb, he craned his neck around the watch-room with amazement. "So they didn't bury all their technology." 

"No, this was far too crucial to bury. Their ancestors knew your people would be coming from the time they first settled here. They've been watching the skies for you for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years." 

"My people aren't going to wipe them out, you know," Luthen said, all unhappy sincerity. "It's their knowledge - their skills - all that technology - that we want. Karalians don't kill. Not unless there's no other choice. Life is valuable." 

"Hmm." The Doctor nodded non-committally. That the Janovians had been wiped out by the Karalian invasion was historical fact. All it took was an order from an unstable commander for the general policies of a race during war to go up in smoke. 

"You don't believe me?" 

"Things go wrong." He nodded towards Verani. "She's seen the death of her race. I come from a time where its all history." 

Luthen's head sagged. He was unable to argue with that. 

"Anyway," the Doctor said briskly. "I think we owe it to Verani watch the proceedings with her, don't you?" He met the young man's eyes, then stood up and helped Luthen to climb clumsily to his feet. It wouldn't be polite to deprive Verani of at least the satisfaction of their guilt. The Doctor would watch what he had failed to prevent. 

They crossed to the window to stand beside the First Councillor. Her eyes were fixed now upon the people gathering in the street far below. Their figures were dots the size of ants. The dot standing on the steps of the council building must be Councillor Crivthen. 

"He's telling them about the ships, before the rumours spread through unofficial channels," Verani said. "It should have been my task, but it is better he should do it. The people listen to him, they feel with him, they let him comfort them. I can only lead them." 

"You gave everything for them," Luthen said unsteadily, speaking when words failed the Doctor entirely. "You couldn't do more, ma'am. It isn't your fault." 

Almost every Janovian in the city had to be down there, the Doctor thought, watching the crowd grow larger every second. It took several minutes for it to stop growing and to settle. The Doctor gazed down at the population he'd deliberately failed. Crivthen's figure stepped to a more visible location and began to address the Janovian people, his arms moving in expansive gestures to animate his speech. Though he couldn't be heard from such a great distance above, it was possible to judge the content and effect of his words by the rippling motion of the crowd. 

The Doctor tore his eyes away from the apocalyptic sight, to the array of cloudy stars above his head. One of the stars was growing, beginning to take on a distinct shape. 

"Luthen..." The Karalian turned around, and he jerked his head indicatively to the ceiling. 

Luthen blinked dully at the approaching light. "Advance landing party. To collect specimens and fly-by the local land to map out the territory." 

"Specimens?" the Doctor queried. 

"People," Luthen corrected with a sigh. 

"Something's happening," Verani said, drawing their attention back to the ground. The crowd was rippling with action, faces tipped to the sky. Verani frantically raced around the watch-room, staring through the windows until finally she stopped still, halfway out of an east-facing window. "You can see it," she breathed, her voice raw with apprehension. 

The Doctor joined her, and in that short time it had already become unnecessary to lean out to see the ship, a small dark shape in the sky growing in size as the distance between them shrank. He gently took hold of Verani's shoulders and pulled her back into the safety of the watch-room. 

Luthen, he saw, hadn't moved. The Karalian stood tightly wrapped in his own thoughts. 

The ship was close enough now to see details, and the details were much as the Doctor had expected from what he'd already seen of Karalian technology. Crude and bulky as their cybernetics, ungainly and blocky with the same unfinished look to it. Even from the still-considerable distance he could tell it was large. It seemed to be getting faster as it approached, although he knew that to be a trick of the distance. It would be deccelerating to land. 

The three of them, Janovian and Karalian and Time Lord, watched in silence as the warship drew so close it dominated the sky, casting a great shadow over the city as it blocked the single risen sun. As it swept overhead it seemed very low indeed. 

It was coming in to land on the edge of the city, the Doctor realised, his eyes and brain tracking and calculating its progress. 

Near the vaults. 

* * *

If she looked up, Nyssa knew she would see only the lit scaffold-like frame of the metal staircase winding endlessly higher until it shrank beyond sight. All the rest was darkness, and not even the point of daylight which marked the entrance could be seen. But she wasn't looking up. All she saw was the next step - and after that the next, and the next. Her legs strained endlessly to conquer them, her footing unsteady, her breathing harsh and painful, her head reeling with the weight of her thoughts. 

Nyssa felt sick as she hurried after Bannot in their frantic ascent through the darkness, and it wasn't from the physical exertion. She'd abandoned both her friends now. What was left? She had no other home but the TARDIS, no other family but those she'd failed and, in failing, condemned to death. It did no good to tell herself dispassionately that there had been no choice. She still felt she there was something, somehow, that she could and should have done. She should never have sent Tegan in the first place, not when she knew it wasn't certain she'd be able to bring her back. 

Bannot's assurances they'd return meant nothing if any of those damaged devices still had active power. If their destructive mechanisms hadn't been activated by the fall, radiation leakage could still prove deadly. Enough to kill Tegan, down there in the machine. Herself, if she tried to return. It could be too late for her and Bannot even now, unfelt radiation already suffusing their cells. 

They were halfway to the surface when the noise and tremors suddenly ceased. Nyssa almost lost her balance on the steps, used to compensating for the juddering motions. She exchanged glances with Bannot, who had hesitated elegantly mid-stride. He caught hold of her arm before she could take even the first step of a potentially suicidal dash back down into the vaults. 

"Not yet," he said, his youngish face creased in polite concern. "We should find out what happened - and if it's likely to happen again. And, if the machinery which fell is as dangerous as you fear, we should proceed with extreme care when we do return." 

In the face of his sound reason and iron grip, Nyssa had to agree. But still the risk seemed less terrible to her than the guilt of not going. For a moment, she almost fought him, before logic kicked back in and she nodded reluctantly, lacking the energy to speak. More slowly, they proceeded onward up the stairs; Nyssa still breathing in gasps after their initial sprint, Bannot not even out of breath. 

But she was beginning to feel a trace of resentment towards the unflappable Councillor Bannot, who always had an answer for everything and delivered it with that unchanging condescending smile. 

* * *

**Chapter 10**

The spaceship's bulk was a dark mass blocking out the horizon. Nyssa's breath caught in her throat at the sight of its black shape looming over the whitewashed street leading from the vaults to the city walls. It was enormous, many times the size of the Janovian houses, but for all its size a rather primitive example of spacefaring technology. Its sides were scarred with old burns and marks from a multitude of different weapons technologies, repaired and patched over with a basic kind of efficiency. But it was still impressive, especially in view of the fact most of the city would have fitted inside its bulk. 

"By Razathon's beard." Bannot's stunned exclamation pulled her eyes from the spaceship and she turned to help him up out of the dug-out pit. He climbed easily to his feet and brushed the dust from his robe. "No, that is _not_ Kweril's ship." 

"It must be the Karalian," Nyssa breathed. With all that had happened she had, incredibly, allowed the thought of an alien invasion fleet landing on Janovay in the near future to slip her mind. The threat had never seemed very immediate compared with Verani's. It had always been in the future. She hadn't really thought on how the future could as easily be 'tomorrow'. 

She was wondering why the streets were so empty when the little band of people rounded a corner some way down a nearby street. About a dozen figures, only two of them wearing Janovian robes. The others were dressed in grey uniforms, and carried bulky energy weapons. 

"Soldiers!" Nyssa exclaimed. "Those people with them, aren't they the ones you sent back to Verani?" 

Bannot nodded grimly. "Come on. Let's get out of here before they see us." He caught her arm, spurring her on as they broke into a run for the sanctuary of the council building. 

Nyssa heard shouts from the Karalians before they'd gone more than a few steps. She didn't dare look back to see how close the pursuit was, but her spirits sank. She knew she couldn't run very far. The climb up from the vault had already drained too much of her energy. Bannot might make it, but she was coldly certain she could not. 

An energy beam shot through the air inches from her right leg and drew a charred brown burn-scar across the wall of a nearby house. 

"Keep going!" Bannot said, his grip on her shoulder hauling her onward as she faltered. But, overbalanced, she fell, skinning the palms of her outflung hands and knocking the breath from her body. 

Bannot skidded to a halt and knelt to help her up - and spun to the ground in sprawling disarray as an energy beam flared past Nyssa's face and caught him in the right shoulder. 

Nyssa blinked, the aftermath of the beam making coloured spots flare in front of her eyes. When her sight cleared Bannot lay, unmoving, face down on the street. She crawled to his side, reaching out with bloody hands to turn his still form over so she could examine the injury. As she did so, she noticed with horror that he didn't seem to be breathing. An involuntary sob of despair escaped her throat. Another corpse on her hands. "No!" she said, shaking him. "Councillor Bannot!" She touched the charred area of his robes, of his chest. Pulled the tattered cloth aside. The burned edges of the wound underneath sickened her. There was no blood; the searing heat of the beam had cauterised the injury instantly. She didn't know enough about Janovian biology to guess at what kind of damage had been done internally. 

The clatter of many pairs of running military feet coming to a halt called her attention to the Karalians, and she looked up from the body to a circle of faces. 

She was astonished to see the faces of people. She'd been expecting something like robots, with little humanity left in them. But these were _people_. Most of them had at least one cybernetic limb, and there was one individual whose only flesh part appeared to be his head, but the Karalians all had human faces. 

There were eight of them, a mix of male and female. None of them older then thirty, most much younger. The captive Janovians weren't among them, probably under guard elsewhere, maybe taken back to the ship. 

A woman trained her energy weapon on Nyssa, and a stern glower informed her to stay still if she wanted to stay alive. But for that brief threat, the group seemed oblivious to her; they had matters to deal with amongst themselves. The woman, who seemed to be in charge, glared around the other Karalians. "You call that a disabling shot?" she barked, her voice rough-edged with the raw sound which comes from habitually talking in shouts. "Look at him! Alive, remember! What use is a corpse?" 

One of the men holstered his gun with a degree of shame. "I didn't know he was going to move, ma'am. I was aiming for his legs." 

"Nobody else was aiming for them at all. We could have caught them without damage." There were several moments of heated argument until the woman shouted over the protests and they quieted again. 

The young man knelt down next to Bannot's corpse, casting a quick glance at Nyssa who'd been sitting in the dust watching the feared Karalian enemy squabbling with increasing incredulity. He examined the injury briefly. "Lung shot. We can repair this, but... I don't know." He removed a glove and set the fingers of his single real hand to Bannot's neck. "I can't feel a pulse. Looks like he's dead." 

"Let me see." The woman shoved her compatriot aside and, awkwardly because both her legs were synthetic, she knelt down next to Bannot. She reached for the dead man's wrist but, before her fingers could connect, a strange luminescence began to creep over Bannot's body. The woman jerked back and staggered clumsily to her feet, as though expecting an attack of some sort. The Karalians reached for their weapons. 

"Don't!" Nyssa yelled, scrambling on her hands and knees to place herself between their guns and the man who wasn't quite dead. As the dazzling light slowly engulfed Bannot's form, she breathed in sharply and forgot to breathe out. Within seconds, he was glowing all over with alien energy. 

She'd seen this before. 

Gradually, the light dissipated, and what it left in its wake was not the man who had been lying there dead but a man who choked breath into his lungs and who, gasping in great lungfuls of air, sat up so that the torn cloth fell away from his unmarked shoulder, and stared wildly around the hostile group. His eyes settled on Nyssa, filled with a helpless confusion she remembered well. 

"Oh, no..." she breathed. She should have foreseen this, after the Doctor's hints. She caught the stranger's shaking hands in hers, knowing that he would need support. "It's all right, Bannot. It was an accident. It's all right." 

The Karalians shifted uneasily on their feet, looking at a loss. The woman in command radiated hostility, as though she resented her lack of control over events. "What's happened to him?" she snapped, clutching her gun like a talisman. 

Nyssa looked up at them, feeling strangely detached. "He's regenerated." 

* * *

Luthen stared down at the ship which had settled into a noisy landing just outside the city walls. He recognised the patches on its sides, the old scars and newer wounds in its shell. It had been all the home he'd had since beginning his military service. His friends, his comrades, were on board that ship, the _Vardito_. People he knew by face and by name would be part of the force responsible for the destruction of Verani's world. Jovanka had been right when she accused him. The order to join the invasion fleet must have come in after his own disappearance but, still, if not for the accident he would've been on that ship, one of the invaders. 

Closing his eyes, he leaned forward over the waist-high walls of the watch room, head rested on folded arms. 

Someone touched his shoulder. He expected it to be the Doctor but when he turned around it was Verani who stood there. "Your grief gives me hope for your race," she said, her voice unusually hesitant, lacking her normal power. "It isn't your fault, Luthen. Perhaps when you return to your people your grief can change them, a little, and perhaps if that is true then I can feel we will not have died for nothing." 

"I wish I could stop it all." Luthen's fists clenched in frustration. "I never wanted to hurt anybody. I never had a choice. Karalians are either killers or techs, and I never had the brains to be a tech." He blinked angrily. He was supposed to be battle-trained, and this woman the enemy. 

"Luthen," the Doctor interrupted, sharp with concern. According to Verani, the Doctor was a dying man, but he neither looked nor acted it. "You said that ship was collecting specimens, people." 

He nodded. 

The Doctor sighed and turned his back on the view, leaning against the wall as though whatever he was thinking drained his remaining energy. "Councillor Verani. All the people on Janovay-" he pointed a finger downwards "-are right here. Except for Nyssa and Tegan, who may be safe enough in the vaults where Karalian scanners cannot reach them, and the people you sent to bring them back. Why should they land where they have except for convenient access to the only isolated specimens on the planet?" 

Verani nodded slowly. "Bannot." Her stricken eyes flickered back to the ship, then returned to Luthen. "What happens to the people they collect?" 

Luthen shook his head, not wanting to tell her. Reluctantly, he said, "Examination and experimentation. They'll want to know about your race's biological and genetic make-up, your chemical tolerances and physical capabilities. About... about what you intended to do with me, except they've had practice and training, and they won't relent partway through. I... I'm told they try to be as humane about the proceedings as possible." 

She gave a stony, unconvinced frown and returned her gaze to the ship. 

* * *

The new Bannot still looked young, but perhaps a few years older than his previous incarnation. The elegant perfection of form and his smoothly handsome features had not survived the transition and his new body suffered by comparison. His hair was a slightly lighter shade of brown and was longer, falling to his shoulders in straggling locks. His nose was overlong and too pointed, and though his features were pleasant enough they were not so overwhelmingly perfect as they had been. His wide brown eyes contained more sensitivity and less calm logic. 

The hands Nyssa clutched were raw-boned, only a token layer of skin stretched over them, and she guessed that, standing, he'd be visibly taller than before and markedly thin. 

It looked rather as though his form had been hastily assembled into the best that could be managed by his violently enforced regeneration, as though the circumstances of his death had tailored the form of his next life. 

He smiled a little hesitantly up at her with his vague, confused eyes and his slightly crooked mouth - a defect she wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't looked so flawless before. "Nyssa," he said, his voice gentler than the old Bannot's. "Are you all right?" 

She blinked back frustrated tears. His death had, in part, been her fault. "Yes," she said. "I'm fine. And so are you, now. Do you... remember what happened?" 

He looked beyond her, bringing the Karalians around them back to Nyssa's attention. His eyes flicked briefly around the circle of armed men and women, and a frown skittered across his expression, an irritation that would never have penetrated his previous self's measured calm. "Yes, Nyssa. Karalians with guns. Regeneration. A thoroughly unpleasant experience." He shifted, gathering his balance to stand. The Karalians' guns wavered nervously. 

"You people!" Nyssa snapped, the thread of her patience giving way as she caught Bannot's hands and helped him to his feet, placing herself stubbornly to block their line of fire. Once she had him standing, she rounded upon them in fury. "Look at him! He's obviously unarmed and still weak. And the Janovians are peaceful, non-violent people. What you just saw is normal for his race and no threat to you. Why don't you use your brains and stop acting like trigger happy thugs!" 

The woman in command glared sourly at her and asked, cagily, "You're not a native of this planet?" 

Nyssa reviewed what she'd said and realised her admission, but didn't see any harm in it. "No, I came here with some friends. We're travellers. We got caught up in this business by accident." 

Bannot swayed at her side, looking around the Karalians who stared back with a kind of fearful awe. His hand caught Nyssa's shoulder, maybe for balance, maybe because he'd heard the dangerous tone in her voice. "I, however, am a native of Janovay," he said. "My name is Bannot. I'm one of the Janovian ruling council. Please pardon me if I don't extend you a welcome to our world." 

This edge of sarcasm, slight as it was, astonished Nyssa and made her wonder how much of the Janovians' reserve was a product of the sterile environment. And how much effect the violence of Bannot's regeneration might have had upon his personality. 

"This is Nyssa," he added, when she made no effort to introduce herself. "An alien to this planet, as she has said." 

The Karalians seemed uneasy. A few of them were looking around as though they expected the Janovian populace to attack in force. 

"Sergeant Dunae of the Karalian military arm," the woman returned. "You are prisoners of the Karalian Union. The rest is of no consequence. We're leaving and, whoever and whatever you might be, you're coming with us." She nodded to a few of her command and two soldiers took Bannot's arms while another reached for Nyssa. 

"No!" She felt a chill run through her as it hit her for the first time what her capture would mean for Tegan and the Doctor. She backed away, casting a plea around the group as various weapons clicked into firing position. "I can't go with you! I have to get back to my friends. I'm not even from this planet! I've been here only two days. Please let me go! My friend Tegan might die if I don't go back to help her." 

Bannot cut in, "I see no reason for you to keep Nyssa when you have me. I told you, I'm one of the Janovian ruling council. All the leverage and information you need. Let her return to her friends and leave this place before the killing begins. She's just a neutral bystander, no use nor threat to you." 

Dunae blinked at them, no emotion but irritation touching her expression. "Everyone's useful," she rapped. The Karalian who'd been foiled before secured a painfully tight grip on Nyssa's arm and she yelped in pain. The hand holding her was undoubtedly not flesh and blood. She could feel the cold of the metal through her sleeve, the hard edges and inhuman strength of its grasp. 

Nyssa's hopes shattered. While she hadn't wanted to desert Bannot in his newly-regenerated condition, as long as Tegan and the Doctor remained alive her loyalties lay first with them. If she couldn't save Tegan, and if she could do nothing else to remedy their situation, she'd at least wished to be at the Doctor's side when the apocalypse hit. But now, there would be nothing she could do for her friends. She could not even die with them. 

She wondered half-heartedly about the woman's objection. A Karalian proverb or propaganda? It had the feel of a practised phrase. The woman's gaze still lingered on Bannot, as though she couldn't tear her eyes away. "Can all your people... 'regenerate'?" she asked, a strange quality to her voice. 

Bannot nodded. "If the degree of damage is not too severe." 

The interest which flared in the woman's eyes was calculating. Nyssa knew what the Karalian were about - technological and genetic scavengers, their motives for their invasions no more than plain greed. People or not, they had no more morals than the Cybermen. The way the Karalians all adopted expressions of anticipation and excitement at Bannot's words... She was just a windfall for them, an unexpected bonus. 

_Everyone's useful..._

"This could be it," said an anonymous voice from the middle of the group. "It really could. I never saw anything like that before..." 

"Silence!" Dunae yelled, turning on them with undue fury reddening her face. "I'll have no speculation before we know the facts. None! We have to get them back to the ship. Later, we'll find out if they're any use. We don't operate on guesswork." 

Nyssa struggled in the unbreakable grip, but Dunae waved her gun and asked, "Do you have lives to spare?" and she shook her head and ceased her resistance. 

Bannot couldn't walk quickly enough for them, and had to be half-dragged. He sagged between two Karalians, in front of her as Dunae led the group down the street towards the ship, snatching the occasional glance back over his shoulder to see if she was all right. Nyssa tried to match her steps to those of her captor to avoid the indignity of being dragged along. She drew in a breath as she saw how the Karalians had got past the city wall. A hole several metres wide had been blasted out of the stonework. Rocky debris was strewn across the street. 

A Karalian woman stomped out of a nearby house, followed by a bedraggled Karalian man covered in pale dust. Dunae stopped the procession and snapped out a demand for a report. 

"Ma'am," the woman said wearily. She couldn't have been more than about seventeen. "The two specimens ran away in the confusion. These people, they're fast, and they seem to have unbelievable stamina. We were unable to catch them." 

A smile touched the corner of Bannot's new mouth. 

Dunae snorted irritably. "Well, we'll have to make do with what we have. The rest of the population are too concentrated within the city centre, and we're out of time." She raised her voice. "Everyone back on board ship! Those left behind will find a reprimand on their record if they survive the experience!" 

They clambered over rubble, through the gap in the city walls. Nyssa fell several times, landing on the sharp edges of newly-blasted rock, cutting her hands and arms and bruising her knees through the fabric of her clothing. Bannot's Karalian guards lifted him up bodily and carried him over the obstruction. Obviously he was worth more to them than she was. Maybe they imagined they could steal the secrets of his regenerative physiology. If that was so, they'd find themselves confounded - it would require a far more advanced understanding of the sciences than the Karalians displayed to unravel the secrets of Time Lord - or, if not, then surely equally complex - genetics. 

The ship loomed above them. She could see the exterior works of the drive visible along the scarred metal of its underside, could see it was in a bad state of repair. Borrowed and patched technology, like that of all scavengers. Halfway along its length a ramp led down from a hatch, looking ridiculously small against the enormity of the space vessel. Nyssa and Bannot were dragged towards it. 

As she was hauled inside the alien ship, Nyssa snatched a last glance upwards to the sky. The second of the two suns had risen, painting the world gloriously bright. 

Another beautiful day on Janovay. 

* * *

The Karalian ship receded into nothing more than another dot that wasn't a star on the starscape of the watch-room's ceiling. The Doctor's eyes, following it, stayed fixed long after it had joined the others in stationary orbit, marking its position into his memory from habit rather than any plan of rescue. There was nothing positive he could do which would not also risk altering the course of the invasion. 

"They've found their specimens," Verani said. 

The Doctor frowned. For all he knew, the Karalians had left empty-handed. More likely with Bannot or one of the other Janovians. But worry tickled at the back of his mind. Nyssa and Tegan would almost certainly have been in the vaults, safe from this threat at least. Yet... Nyssa had been interrupted... 

"It seems we have a temporary reprieve, anyway," he said, "while they put together the information they've gathered. They know Janovay has no weapons technology, no space travel and no allies to help them. They'll take as long as they need." 

Verani's mouth thinned into a sour line. "More waiting." 

He nodded. "Nothing any of us can do except make the best of the time that's left. I suggest we all get some rest. Luthen, when was the last time you had any sleep, or food for that matter?" 

The Karalian jumped at being addressed, and spun around - he'd been looking out of the window again, his back to them. His eyes were reddened. He seemed to be a bundle of nerves, thoroughly unhappy at being cast as one of the villains. He stammered, "Crivthen gave me food... that was yesterday morning, I think. I had a little sleep in Kweril's lab." 

"Well, we'd better tackle those stairs again and get you taken care of," the Doctor tutted. "Eh, Verani?" 

"Of course." 

The Doctor leaned over the side of the tower. Down in the street, the crowd had begun to dissipate now the visible threat had gone. The people presumably would ready themselves in whatever way helped them best to cope with the end in sight. Crivthen's lonely figure lingered atop the council building's steps. 

"Let me help you." The Doctor turned at the sound of Verani's voice, and watched her take Luthen's arm as they started to descend the stairs. The Karalian looked, if anything, scared witless by her concern. The Doctor snatched a last wistful glance at the vista of the Janovian countryside, then trailed after them, absently kicking at the supports of the handrail as he walked. 

At least her concern for her enemy had given Verani something to think about other than her people's impending destruction. For himself, the Doctor had no distractions. Nothing to be done that wouldn't risk interfering with Janovay's future history... He wasn't used to facing the world without a future, without any reserve plans or desperate last-minute solutions. 

He'd _won_. Janovay was doomed. Yet he did not feel victorious. Like poor Luthen, he felt like the villain. 

It wasn't a feeling he was comfortable with. 

He watched Verani and Luthen to divert his thoughts. The Janovian and the Karalian. The victim and the destroyer. Both equally polite and concerned about the other's hurts. 

It could have been funny, in a macabre sort of way. 

He wondered again about the supposed Karalian immunity to pain. There was nothing, he was certain, extraordinary about Luthen's physical make-up except for the almost barbarically primitive cybernetic implants. For all intents and purposes, the Karalian were basically humanlike - there was a lot of it around. This fable about the race's resilience worried the Doctor for reasons he couldn't place. He was reminded that Luthen's rescue on the roof had occurred after almost two days' deprivation of food and sleep and no small amount of physical battering. There was something about the Karalians, then... 

His thoughts were beginning to explore some interesting theories by the time they reached the base of the staircase. 

"I'll show you to a room," Verani said to Luthen. "You can get some rest. Doctor, what do you intend to do? I... l will give you a supply of the Zayol if you wish to return to your TARDIS and leave." 

He shook his head. "I can't leave without Tegan and Nyssa. I'm not sure what's happened to Tegan. I'm not totally convinced she's dead." He considered the problem. They were in a kind of limbo, right now. The time between when Tegan had arrived in the past and when she was supposed to have died, according to Luthen, had been less than a day. Twelve hours, say, at most. That was how long he'd have to wait. After that time had passed, he could safely go to the temporal device and see what, if anything, he could salvage without risk of changing what had already happened. Nyssa... well, he would not be able to explain things to Nyssa, and contacting her too early would also be risking altering Tegan's fate. He had no choice but to leave it for now, and try to live with the guilt sawing at his nerves. "I'll wait with you," he told Verani. 

She nodded understanding, and turned as a Janovian rounded the end of the corridor and hurried over to her, stealing her attention. 

The Janovian was streaked with blood and out of breath. Her eyes widened. "Where is Bannot?" she asked urgently, by which the Doctor surmised this was one of the Janovians sent to the vaults. 

"Bannot was taken, First Councillor. There was nothing we could do. Gheran and I saw our chance to run and took it. Bannot was injured; I do not know how badly. Gheran was shot in the arm. The wound is being treated. I came straight to you." 

Verani nodded wearily. "Very good." The news wasn't unexpected. 

"There is... more," the Janovian added, his eyes flickering to the Doctor. 

* * *

**Chapter 11**

Nyssa clutched the bars of the cell so hard that bones showed white through the joints of her fingers. She'd felt drained since the Karalian scientists had drawn their over-generous blood sample, and the patch on her left arm where they'd taken a tissue sample smarted underneath its dressing. 

The Karalians' treatment had made her feel like an exhibit at the zoo the Doctor had once taken her to visit on Earth. The sky had been grey and it had rained that day on the human tourists huddled inside their coats, the water dribbling down through the tops of the open-air cages and churning the animals' habitats to mud. The Doctor cheerfully ate an ice-cream cone in the downpour and said they didn't mind, and though she understood the importance of study and preservation, she'd felt a little sad for the caged creatures. Now, firsthand, she found it a thoroughly humiliating experience. But she was going to learn what she could from their captors, too, so she gazed out at the ship's laboratory, studying in return the Karalians' scientific operation. 

The cell was in the furthest corner from the door, all-too exposed to the view of anyone in the lab, and it seemed there was always somebody in the lab. There was no night and day, no downtime here. The warship's population lived their life in the rhythm of shifts, not days. There would be no time when Nyssa and Bannot were not under the view of the members of the Karalians' scientific corps who worked at their benches, sometimes speaking to each other in friendly, half-shouted tones that felt out of place in this environment where the lab rats were people. 

The lighting was unrelentingly bright. Occasionally, interested eyes would glance her way, and she would meet their gaze with defiance. Or a Karalian would wander over to frown into the cage close-up, and then she would shrink back out of reach and try to deny them their examination. 

It had been a surprise to her to find such an extensive facility on board a warship, but she supposed the Karalian must be a largely ship-based culture, with people living on board for months, maybe years on end, and of course they'd need scientific facilities to analyse their captive peoples and technologies. It was a curiously organised form of piracy. 

Her gaze settled upon Dr. Vyrs, the only one of the scientific corps who had been identified within her hearing. He seemed to be the most senior of the Karalian scientists, surprising to her because he was no older than thirty; a thin, anaemic man lacking any visible cybernetic enhancements. He hunched over a lab bench, peering at blood samples with his forehead creased in concentration. 

"I wonder what he'll make of your blood, Councillor Bannot," she said over her shoulder. She added to herself with quiet vindictiveness, "I hope it confuses him utterly." 

She loosed her grip on the bars and flexed her bloodless fingers. She felt faint. She'd wondered whether it was procedure for the Karalian scientists to draw more blood than they needed, to weaken their specimens and make them more malleable. 

The framework of their cell was a mesh of thin bars crossed into squares large enough for her arm to fit through to the shoulder but offering no weaknesses for a breakout. It formed the shape of a cube about four metres across in any direction. The mesh was self-contained, independent of the ship's structure, running along inside the two walls the cell backed against, covering panel joins and a tantalisingly large ventilation grill. It extended, too, across the floor, making footing difficult. It was obvious the Karalians were well accustomed to keeping a variety of peoples securely confined. She didn't think even the Doctor would have been able to escape. 

With a sigh, she turned, leaning back against the bars. In depressed silence, she ran her eyes over the interior of the cell. Bannot was sitting crossed-legged on their only item of furnishing, a simple foam mattress pulled over into the far corner where shadow provided a pitifully meagre sort of privacy. 

Bannot didn't look much like a Janovian. He wore a Karalian uniform minus insignia which had been brought to replace his burned and ruined robes. With his youthful looks he could have passed for just another Karalian soldier, except he lacked the stony cast to the eye which seemed the Karalian standard. His hair hung in tatty strands. His meditative posture might have been an attempt to regain his previous incarnation's aura of calm, but he looked strained and couldn't hide it. His hands were coated with a sheen of sweat and he'd rested them on his knees to stop them shaking, but not before Nyssa had noticed. The bandage on his arm matched her own. Red soaked through the white of the dressing. 

He looked up at her and his mouth twisted into a smile that wasn't very steady. "Why should they have any trouble with my blood?" he asked curiously. That was another thing she'd noticed about him since his regeneration - the interest with which he eyed the Karalian technology and listened to the scientists speak. If he'd been interested in these very un-Janovian matters before, he'd hidden it well. 

"Your genetic structure is like the Doctor's," Nyssa explained. "Very complex. Much more so than mine. Because you can regenerate, and because of other things too I suspect. I don't think the Karalian are advanced enough to understand it. I certainly hope they're not. It could cause some very messy complications." 

"Your people are more advanced than the Karalian?" he asked. "Where was it the Doctor said you were from? Traken? Where is that?" 

She shook her head sadly. "Nowhere anymore. It was destroyed. I'm the only survivor of my people. But... it was, or will be, many years and light years from here." 

"I'm sorry about your people, Nyssa," Bannot said. 

She found herself unable to reply. The Janovians were going down the same road. She wished she could have helped them, in defiance of history. 

When the Karalians had taken the blood and tissue samples, Bannot had been silent where the Doctor in his place might have made quips, tried to win over the enemy, kept up an encouraging commentary to Nyssa. It had made a valuable point to her. She should not trick herself into thinking of him as being like the Doctor just because his race seemed to have similar physiological peculiarities. 

Bannot did not possess the Doctor's experience or resilience. He would not be pulling any last-minute escapes out of a hat. In many ways, Nyssa herself was the more capable of the two. Bannot had lived out his life on a quiet planet without technology. 

That realisation placed another weight on her shoulders. She could think of precisely nothing to remedy their situation. 

She picked her way across the barred floor of the cell and sat down next to Bannot on the mattress. He shifted to allow her more room, uncrossing his legs and hunching up, arms curled around bended knees. A curiously defensive posture, almost childlike. He poked absently at the red stain on his arm. "You have a lot of experience of the world, travelling with the Doctor," he said, not looking at her. "I suppose we on Janovay must seem very sheltered to you. I've never been in a spaceship before, not in hundreds of your years of life." 

"That isn't necessarily a bad thing. The more advanced a society is, the more likely it is to destroy itself or become a threat to others. I've seen it happen. Look at the Karalians. Janovay's beautiful." 

"Not for much longer." He sat up straighter. "I don't know what you'd think of it if you'd lived there years. Nothing ever changes... changed... on Janovay." 

Nyssa nodded slowly. She rather suspected it had been intended that way. 

"I don't know what's wrong with me." Bannot stood and crossed the cell to stand at the bars where she had before, his new tall and emaciated frame more lanky than ever in the Karalian uniform. "I'm thinking thoughts I've never had before, saying things I'd never have said, before. I'm not sure this regeneration's done me any good. I don't even know what I look like yet." He caught hold of the bars with shaking hands, and Nyssa realised with concern that he seemed more unsteady now than he had when they'd been brought on board. 

She'd felt the ship lift off as they were walking through the confusing maze of corridors to the lab soon after boarding. There had been no screens or portals from which to watch Janovay receding into the black void of space, only her own imagination to provide the image. From the note of the ship's engines, they'd entered planetary orbit. Janovay was still there, so very close but far out of reach. 

Nyssa pulled her sleeve down over her hand and, reaching through the bars, began to polish a square section of the wall with her fist. 

"Look, Bannot," she said when she could see her own face staring back at her in it, bloodlessly white. She pulled him in close to see. On hands and knees he squinted into the wall, his expression first blank, then elastic as he pulled his features through a series of experimental contortions. How strange it must be to not recognise your face in the mirror, Nyssa thought. The Doctor knew this. She could only imagine. 

"I suppose it could be worse," Bannot said, pulling back, and she moved to help him regain his feet. Standing, he swayed, but waved away her assistance. "I had no control over the regeneration, this time. It was too violent, too unexpected. I almost died." 

"How many times have you regenerated before?" 

"Only once." 

Someone rattled the cell door, causing them both to jump. Sergeant Dunae was outside, the cell's electronic key in one hand and her gun in the other. She opened the door. "You're to come with me. Dr. Vyrs and Captain Alzen want to speak to you." 

"Speak to us?" Nyssa repeated. "Are you sure that's right? I thought you people just wanted to study us." 

Dunae's eyebrows impatiently climbed her forehead, and she levelled the gun with a loud click. 

* * *

The drifting shaft of sunlight streaking through the narrow window broke Luthen from sleep, falling hot and dazzling across his eyes. He blinked to wakefulness, his thoughts muzzy and confused. Cold angular metal - his inoperative cybernetic arm - dug painfully into his ribs, and he shifted and sat up with a groan. 

The glare stung his raw eyes. He felt like he needed to sleep for another week, but he was too restless to doze off again now that at least he no longer seemed tired to the point of collapse. There was too much happening to sleep through. 

He rolled off the bunk in a clumsy clatter of machine parts. Sleeping was a lot less comfortable now than before the Syndrome ate his leg and arm. He picked himself up from the floor and made a token attempt to smooth out the creases in his grey uniform. He must look a mess. The Sarge would've been livid if he'd presented himself for morning inspection looking like this. The thought made him grin. He might not be made for the military, but at least he had the satisfaction of knowing it hadn't been made for him, either. 

He left the small room and went to find Verani and the Doctor. The Janovian populace were as averse to conversation as ever, but he managed to get one of them to point him in the right direction, and he found the pair in the room that had served as Kweril's lab. They were sitting drinking tea. 

At least, Verani was sitting. Quite calmly, in the chair Luthen had spent the best part of a day secured to. The Doctor walked around the lab and poked interestedly at piles of equipment and substances in phials. As Luthen watched, he stuck a pencil into a phial of green liquid and then squinted at it with interest as the green stuff ate all the lead from the middle, sizzling fiercely. 

Not looking up, the Doctor said with faint disapproval, "Three hours of sleep isn't much after over two days' deprivation. I didn't expect you'd be up and around again so soon. But then, there is the remarkable recuperative power of the Karalians I've been hearing so much about." The latter, he added in a tone obviously meant to mean something, and he flicked a brief penetrating glance over the top of the phial. 

"We're resistant to pain," Luthen said, "apparently. In comparison with most other races. I don't think it's quite the same thing." 

The Doctor dismissed it with a wave of his hand. "I hear accounts you're all too well familiar with this room and its former occupant." 

"Yes." 

"Well, Luthen, our Mirosan friend appears to have gone missing. We'd assumed he'd left in his ship, but his ship's still where it was. So, just to be careful, you'd better stay around Verani or myself until we find out what he's up to. You didn't exactly seem his favourite person, and while there's nothing he can do against the Karalian as a whole he may decide there's nothing to stop him taking a few potshots at you." The Doctor fished some kind of visual aid with thin gold frames out of his coat pocket and propped it low on his nose. He squinted at the green liquid again through the lenses, then raised his eyes to peer at Luthen over their rims. 

Luthen, thinking of the vengeful Mirosan, shivered slightly, absently gripping his useless left arm with the fingers of his living right hand. 

"Oh, yes," the Doctor said, his interest in the phial vanishing. He discarded it on a random shelf, and tossed the useless pencil into a mound of machine parts on the floor. "Let me take a look at that arm now, see if there's anything I can do." He briskly cleared a space on Kweril's work bench with a careless sweep of his own arm and waved Luthen over. 

"You know Cybernetics?" 

"I dabble in most fields," he said. Verani raised her head briefly and smiled, then settled back into silent meditation, her eyes focused a million miles away. Luthen wondered if the Janovians had any meditative preparations for death. Then again, maybe she was just thinking. 

He rested his cybernetic arm on the work bench and fished from his pockets the mechanisms Kweril had removed, making a little pile of them at which the Doctor directed a distressed grimace. "I can help," Luthen said. "I have a basic idea of where all the mechanics go. I just couldn't mend it myself with only one working arm." 

But he'd mistaken the alien's meaning. The Doctor picked out a semi-disassembled item from the pile. "This is a laser." 

"Yes. It isn't very powerful, it's only a backup. I have other weapons." 

An unfathomable expression on his face, the Doctor pushed the laser aside. "I'll just get the arm working for now, and leave out the extras." 

Unsure what his problem was, Luthen just nodded warily. It would be a relief to have use of the arm again, even if he did have to sit through the Doctor's critical examination of his Karalian cybertechnology in the bargain. He selected the essential components from the machine pieces and watched, adding occasional advice and instruction, while the Doctor tried to reassemble his arm. 

"I suppose you have a lot of experience with these mechanical problems," the Doctor remarked aggrievedly after Luthen pointed out he'd been trying to fix a component in place upside-down. 

"Only a few year's worth. The Syndrome's only been active since I was seventeen. I've had the cybernetic replacement parts three years. We were trained to do basic repairs and maintenance in the field." 

"'Syndrome'?" the Doctor asked absently. Chewing his lower lip in concentration, he didn't look up from his work. 

"You haven't heard of it?" It wasn't so surprising, he supposed. The Doctor had travelled a great distance across space and time to Janovay. This era, and the Union and its adjoining territories, were unfamiliar to him. The Janovians probably didn't themselves grasp the details of the Karalian curse. It was reasonable that the Doctor should not know of it. 

"No." The Doctor gave a satisfied "huh" as the last of the mechanical parts fell into place. Luthen found he was able to move his arm again, and flexed it experimentally. The delicate joints in his synthetic hand and fingers remained immobile, probably unfixable outside of a Karalian parts centre, but having control over the more robust mechanisms at elbow and wrist again was definitely an improvement. He grinned, then noticed the Doctor didn't look happy at all. The alien set down the tools, stood back and aimed a disturbingly intense stare at Luthen. "What are you saying? What is the 'Syndrome'?" 

"Amnos' Syndrome," he supplied. "AmnoSyn. Named after the man who first caught it. Wherever he caught it from is a mystery. But in its active stage it spreads like nothing else. It wasn't long before our entire race was infected. It's a corrosive disease that starts at the extremities and works inwards. The Karalian race has been looking for a cure for generations. You didn't think we went around invading planets for fun, did you?" Even talking to the Doctor, whose interest was genuine and benevolent, he couldn't keep the bitterness from his voice. 

There was a clatter as Verani stood up, casting her teacup carelessly aside. It rolled over and teetered, rocking, on the edge of the workbench. After a moment, her face wiped blank, she turned her horrified eyes to the window and her back upon them both. 

The Doctor looked very concerned indeed. 

"We're all born infected with it, but it doesn't become active until later in life. Usually between the ages of fourteen and twenty, though some people live a lot longer before it activates. Once it's active, you've got maybe five or six years assuming they manage to stop the initial spread of the disease before it eats too much of you. The cybernetics aren't for decoration, Doctor." 

"I never thought they were," he said quietly. He took off his gold frames and rubbed at his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of one hand, wincing. "So... now we know. There lies the source of the Karalians' mythical resilience. You've all lived with pain so long it's lost it meaning. You're all dying slowly, living as best you can in the hopes you can free the next generation from the curse. I'm sorry, Luthen. I had no idea." 

Luthen shrugged uncomfortably. "People don't want to believe the truth. That the Karalian war effort was created by other races, when we were turned away from any medical aid, time and time again, because they feared the Syndrome, until our only hope was to take that technology by force." 

The Doctor, nodding, sighed and bent morosely forward, resting his forehead on his hands, arms steepled, elbows perched on the edge of the lab table. "You know," he said, mock-conversationally, his voice pitched higher than normal, "Five minutes ago, I didn't think it was possible for things to look any worse." 

"What-what's the matter?" Luthen asked. "How have things become worse?" 

"Maybe they haven't, from your point of view. But there's a bigger picture to be considered here. This quiet part of the galaxy is a favourite research project for a number of archaeologists of the future who have made extremely well documented studies of the extent of the Karalian Union's territory. 

"And your people, who are questing for a cure for this 'Syndrome'... have just snatched a bioelectronics expert from a future society several times more advanced than anything this part of the universe currently has on offer." 

* * *

Nyssa held her arm crooked through Bannot's to steady him as they walked through the corridors of the Karalian ship. In truth, she found the physical contact comforting. The sterile impersonality of the bright, white corridors grated on her nerves. 

As they passed some sort of sickbay she caught horrific glimpses, through observation windows and opened doors, of Karalians in various states of cybernetic disassembly. She presumed they were having their artificial parts repaired or serviced, and she strove for dispassion, telling herself this must be a very everyday procedure for the Karalian, but nothing could inure her to the sight of their chopped-off, scarred limbs. More disturbing still were their faces, alive as ever - talking, laughing, joking. 

_It's their normality,_ she thought, suppressing a shudder. 

Bannot gripped her arm tighter, his expression a mixture of fascination and revulsion. 

Further on, in a side ward down a corridor branching off from the main route, she saw rows of beds containing other Karalians, their bodies buried under blankets. Most of them lay still, unmoving, looking dead. These hidden figures bothered her more than the others. She had a feeling that if they weren't covered she'd see horrors. From her calculations of the ship's layout after they'd traversed several more corridors, Dunae had taken an unnecessary detour to make sure they passed that ward. 

_We are meant to see this. Why?_

When they arrived at their destination, Nyssa was surprised to be shown into a small, tidy office and not an interrogation room. The office surprised her, too, in of itself, for she would have expected something bare and soulless, but it was a warm room, painted pale beige, with a crisp style of decor featuring straight lines and rare patches of geometric ornamentation. Some of it was worked in pale wood. A few extra trimmings suggested someone who spent a good deal of time in there and had tried to personalise it a little. Her eye was caught by the pictures on the walls of Karalian faces, a few of them quite accomplished paintings rather than photographic representations. A stray paint brush rested incongruously among the stationery arrayed on the desk. 

Well, the Karalians must have plenty of spare time on board ship, in between their target planets. It shouldn't surprise that they had hobbies. 

Dr. Vyrs was leaning against the wall in the far corner of the room, to the side of the desk, his expression sour as ever. The man behind the desk must be the Captain himself. His short and stocky build was so distinct as to be obvious even sitting down. His left arm was cybernetic below the elbow joint. His eyes were a pale crystalline blue, undeniably intelligent, and Nyssa's expectations of seeing an older man in the role were foiled as they had been with Vyrs. 

His head was shaven so that only the slightest stubble of hair remained, a military affectation it seemed several of the more 'senior' Karalians adopted. Nyssa had wondered about it. It gave the impression of increased age and thus authority. She was beginning to suspect something was unusual about the Karalian life expectancy. 

When he spoke, the Captain's gruff voice was not unkind, maybe even a little... apologetic? "You realise, of course, that you are already contaminated. There is no longer any 'you' or 'us', we are all the same now. You can't go back. There is no escape. We are not your enemy, but your only friends, your only hope. Your family. You are now Karalian." 

There was a brief silence in which Dunae stood impassive, Vyrs fidgeted, and Captain Alzen's eyes tracked between Nyssa and Bannot, trying to gage their reactions. 

"What do you mean, 'contaminated'?" Nyssa demanded, fists clenched with the effort to keep her voice from trembling. 

Vyrs cursed and muttered, "I really hate it when they don't know." 

"Know what?" Bannot asked, straightening and moving away from Nyssa. When he leaned forward to place his hands firmly on Alzen's desk, it looked very much like assertiveness, and not inability to stand without support. "Janovay's not the most advanced of planets. We can't know unless you tell us. Using small words if possible." 

Nyssa stepped forward too, needing the proximity of an ally. Her hand returned to his arm, no longer for his benefit even in pretence. 

Alzen massaged his forehead with his flesh fingers. Without meeting their eyes, he launched into an explanation which Vyrs cracked his knuckles impatiently throughout: "You can consider yourselves ambassadors for the people of Janovay within the Karalian Union, but you _are_ Karalian now. You already carry the Syndrome. Don't delude yourselves into thinking us your enemy, because you'll find no other home now. Nobody else will harbour you. You're _infected_. If you want to live in hope, you can only join us whole-heartedly. Or else you can slink quietly away to die, giving up all hope of a disease-free existence for your descendants." 

"A disease," Nyssa said slowly. "The Syndrome." All her preconceptions and deductions about the Karalian Union crumbled. All the possibilities she'd considered, yet this one had never entered her mind. The Karalians were victims, too. That was how they assimilated their conquests so easily and absolutely. Once exposed to the Syndrome you _were_ Karalian. Their racial identity was defined by a disease. 

"Those people we saw." She turned to Dunae angrily. "I thought you took us past those rooms on purpose. You meant to show us what was in store for us. You were trying to manipulate us." 

Dunae nodded cagily. "Standard procedure." 

"Shock tactics," Nyssa corrected. 

"If you like." 

"It's the truth, isn't it?" 

The Captain coughed, drawing their attention. "You seem to be taking this very calmly..." 

"My name is Nyssa of Traken," she filled in. "I'm not from Janovay. And you don't need to use coercion to gain my help." 

"Nyssa," Bannot said with concern. His hands left the desk to grasp her shoulders, and his knees buckled. She clasped her arms about his waist, struggling to keep him from falling. He continued nonetheless, "You know what the Doctor said. You can't interfere-" 

"Can't I? Bannot, the Doctor's only guessing. And he may know about the Janovians' fate but I'm not so sure about the Karalians. I know techniques and theory more advanced than anything they'll have seen. I can help them. Imagine the suffering - there are millions of Karalians. Billions. Likely more than a thousand aboard this ship alone. So many people infected, living in pain and dying in misery. How can I not help? What about you? You're contaminated too, now." She looked to Captain Alzen and Dr. Vyrs, who were watching with confused incredulity. 

"My people excelled at medicine and bioelectronics. Give me a laboratory and some time. I'll see what I can do." 

* * *

**Chapter 12**

"You can't mean that," Luthen said, his chin jerking up. He took a dangerous step closer. "We've been searching for a cure for generations, and now there's finally a possibility of finding one you want to snatch it away?" 

"I don't _want to_!" the Doctor protested. A deliberate breath, a brief closing of his eyes, searching for calm. The situation on Janovay had set his nerves far too much on edge. He sidestepped Luthen, paced back and forth across the tiled floor while the Karalian watched him with new suspicion. "But Nyssa's from your future, as I am. As far as history is concerned, she isn't supposed to be here. If she finds a cure for the Syndrome it could change the timeline just as drastically as saving Janovay would." 

"Could or could not. Perhaps and perhaps not," Verani said dryly. "You're not really sure, are you, Doctor? But, as we have seen, you would prefer to err on the side of the rather vague threat to the masses than the definite threat to a single race." 

The Doctor gave Verani a frown, but could hardly blame her or Luthen for their bitterness. He said, the pitch of his voice rising in agitation, "It would be very nice if we could all go around changing the wrongs of the past to make the universe a better place, but that isn't how it works. We'd be more likely to wrap up this part of the universe in a neat little temporal paradox which even the Time Lords wouldn't be able to fix. Don't you see we wouldn't be saving the Karalians, or Janovay, in the end? You have to look at the big picture. Sometimes there's really nothing you can do about the details... the individuals." 

"You don't believe that, do you, Doctor?" Verani asked softly. 

"I can't say I haven't bent the rules a few times trying not to believe it, but this is a case of why the rules were made! I have to get to Nyssa and stop her before it's too late." 

"No," said Luthen. His real hand bunched into a fist at his side, and the Doctor regarded the Karalian warily. "What if this was always meant to happen, and... and your reality is the mistake?" 

"An interesting question theoretically, but the universe doesn't count upon time travel as part of the natural order. The original timeline is the stable one." 

"Wouldn't your people help us if they knew the Janovians were of their race?" 

Taken aback by the suggestion, it took several seconds for the implications of what Luthen was asking to sink in. "No!" he said. "My people must not find out about this. And for your information, Verani and I are _not_ of the same race. It's a simple matter of similarities in biological make-up. Just like Karalians and humans, despite there being no relationship whatsoever between Tegan's race and yours." 

Verani smiled sardonically. "What if there was and you didn't know it? I remember the Ancestors. They escaped here to set up their colony on Janovay, fleeing the War in the Future." 

"I didn't hear that and you're not going to repeat it!" the Doctor yelled, throwing his hands up to cover his ears. "If what you're talking about is my - my people's - future I can't afford to hear it!" Verani's smile subsided into a grimace and he cautiously lowered his hands. 

"I've always known the future of my people," she said. "It's my duty, as it was that of my father before me, and all of my line back to the first generation." 

"Yes. What you remember is the future. A future in which the Janovians died and the Karalian Union presumably went on to ravage this corner of the universe for another few centuries. Which means that _we can't afford to change any of it_! I thought you understood that." He swung around to address Luthen, whose confusion was evident. "You can see that, can't you? I wouldn't be harming your people. They've been given a chance history never meant them to have, and it may seem unfair to take it away but it is also _necessary_!" 

Luthen stammered, "I... I don't know. I don't know anything about these things. Jovanka tried to explain about changing the past-" 

"Tegan," the Doctor sighed. "She made quite an impression on you." 

"She saved my life! She saved my life at the cost of her own, and you wouldn't even save her..." He faltered. "You wouldn't save her for the same reasons you say we have to stop any chance of your other friend developing a cure." 

"Yes!" exclaimed the Doctor. "That's right." 

"Maybe Nyssa won't help," the Karalian said. "Or maybe you underestimate her ability to cure the Syndrome - after all, thousands of our scientists have been trying for years." 

"She wanted to help us in defiance of logic," Verani pointed out. 

"She has the knowledge of the sciences they need, and she doesn't know for sure about the Karalians' fate," the Doctor said. "If she'd rather gamble on that ignorance than refuse to help them... It's too great a risk. I need to get to her." 

"Isn't all this a bit academic when we can't get onto the Karalian ship to do anything about it?" Luthen asked testily. "We'd be shot down before we got anywhere near." 

"Not in the TARDIS." The Doctor pulled the key from his pocket and swung it on its string. "Who's coming with me?" 

Verani shook her head, folded her arms across her chest. "My duty is here with my people. What happens to the Karalians does not concern me." 

"Luthen? Do you want to go home?" 

"I'll come with you." There was darkness in Luthen's gaze and the Doctor knew it was unlikely to be from desire to help his own mission that the youth offered to accompany him. Luthen owed his loyalty to his people first, in spite of their atrocities. The Karalians had been searching for their miracle cure for just too long. 

But he nodded and grinned cheerily, "Good. It's not the same on my own. Verani..." He caught one of the First Councillor's hands and clasped it in both of his, a genial farewell gesture. "I'll be back," he said. "I have to retrieve Tegan yet. Until then..." 

Irony raised Verani's eyebrows, and the morose smile which touched her mouth suggested she knew something he didn't. Her eyes were sad as she said, "Goodbye, Doctor." 

The Doctor hesitated, torn between the need for haste and the desire to question her reaction. With a snap decision, he caught Luthen by the arm and hustled him out of the room, calling back to Verani, "See you soon!" 

He thought he heard her reply, softly, almost prophetically, "I doubt it." 

* * *

"Do you think she means it?" Alzen asked, staring at the door out of which Sergeant Dunae had just escorted Nyssa and her Janovian companion, taking them to a lab so Nyssa could begin work. He tapped his metal fingers on the edge of the desk, making small, blunt staccato sounds, an exercise to increase the dexterity of the cybernetic joints that had become a habit. 

"Don't get your hopes up," Vyrs said, a harsher note in his voice than just his usual brusqueness. Alzen could almost see him deliberately crushing any faint stirrings of hope. 

Doctor Vyrs didn't, and never yet had, suffered from the full-blown effects of the Syndrome. In him, the disease was still in its dormancy. At thirty-one, he was one of the oldest Karalians to survive intact, but he still had the Syndrome to look forward to, and over the years its stretched-out inevitability had put a dark edge on his naturally caustic and dry personality. Alzen had known him a long time. 

"She doesn't know what she's up against yet," Vyrs continued. "Even if she has skills and is willing to use them, she's only guessing that she can do anything. Probably wishful thinking. She'll fail, just like everyone else." 

"She seemed remarkably confident," Alzen said. "Her reaction was hardly normal." Absently, he picked up the paintbrush from the desk and twirled it in his cybernetic fingers. He'd always been left-handed; typical that the Syndrome should have taken that hand. 

"No," Vyrs agreed. "Physically she's almost Karalian, you know. The differences are so minor as to be insignificant. Her friend... I've never seen anything like Janovian physiology. It's a pity it isn't any help to us. It tested as having a high vulnerability to the Syndrome _because_ of the regenerative capabilities and the other frills, would you believe? But that girl... she acts like she's seen a lot more than the natives. Her capture by us was hardly the worst thing that's ever happened to her. You can see it in her eyes. I wonder what her story is." 

"You could ask her," Alzen suggested with a hint of sarcasm. "You know. Conversation. The act of communication. Talk to somebody other than me for a change." 

Vyrs glowered, then relented and sighed heavily. He was not a man who made the best of the Karalians' lot, but there was a feeling person inside there - somewhere - if you only took the time to look, as Alzen had. "It won't work, you know," he said. "Dangerous to even think of any other possibility." 

Alzen shrugged. He knew that if Vyrs really thought so, he wouldn't continue to search so hard as he did. 

* * *

"Here." Dunae stopped in front of a door off the corridor. She punched its control panel and it slid open. "You can work in here." 

Nyssa looked up from the papers she'd been studying, surprised. It didn't seem more than a few seconds since she'd started skimming over the files on the Syndrome that Vyrs had given her. She'd read through a good portion the bulky file while they walked through the corridors of the huge spaceship, oblivious to her surroundings and Councillor Bannot's weight on her arm. 

They were back in a familiar area of the ship. This place was not very far from the main laboratory where they had been held prisoner. It made sense: the scientific facilities on the ship would be bunched close together for convenience. The awareness of their former cage's proximity unnerved her and, stepping forward over that threshold, she shivered a little in anticipation. 

But the small room Dunae showed them into was very different to the overwhelming noise and size of the main laboratory. It seemed well stocked with equipment, a vast array of full jars and packets lining the shelves and refrigerating units covering two of its four walls. A large work surface stood in the centre of the floor, and a few comfortable-looking chairs lounged in an alcove next to the door. 

"Most of what you need should be in here," Dunae said. "If you need anything else, ask. If we can get it, we will." 

Nyssa nodded, distracted helping Bannot to sink into a chair. 

"Sorry," the Janovian said. He rubbed at his forehead. He seemed distant, confused. There was a sheen of moisture on his skin. "It must be the stresses of regeneration catching up with me." 

Dunae snorted without any real malice as she closed the door. She flopped into the chair next to Bannot, her posture a disdainful slouch which hadn't manifested in front of either her superiors or those under her command. 

Nyssa left Bannot to dump the heavy pile of papers down onto the work table, but no sooner had their weight left her hands then she was turning back. "He's ill, isn't he?" she demanded of the Karalian sergeant. "You know something, don't you?" 

Scowling, Dunae said, "The blood samples we took showed a high vulnerability to the Syndrome in his race. You'd better work quickly on your miracle cure, because your friend here's probably dying already. He's alien enough for the disease to be unpredictable for us. We can't do anything to help him. It happens. We came across it recently on Miros II." 

She said it emotionlessly, but horrors haunted her eyes. What Dunae must have seen, if Miros had been such a catastrophe... although their moral sensibilities had not impressed much so far, the Karalian did not deliberately kill. In fact, their society seemed very much geared towards the preservation of life. Nyssa saw through her cold front, saw pity there, and unhappily turned back to her substantial research. Another life at stake. There was so much on her head now that the extra pressure of Bannot's probable impending demise didn't seem to add anything palpable to the strain already weighting her mind. She found her place in the notes and continued scanning the Karalians' research. 

It didn't take too long to ingest what was known about Amnos' Syndrome, and she was beginning to develop some ideas by the time she set the papers down again. 

"I'll have to do some tests," she said. Dunae glanced up from her patient slouch and nodded a glassy-eyed acknowledgement. Nyssa was very conscious of the sergeant's eyes upon her as she explored the small laboratory, opening cupboards and refrigerator units. It felt uncomfortable to be so closely watched, especially when there was no hope in Dunae's eyes, only hostility for the person who'd dared bring up the possibility of hope. 

She gathered a little pile of equipment and arranged it on the table. There was a diagnostic computer, fairly primitive in design but it would be useful nonetheless. It could scan and analyse the samples she set up competently enough. She spent several minutes interpreting the peculiarities of Karalian technical systems and shortly managed to get it operational. 

"I'll need some of your blood, for a sample of the Syndrome," she said to Dunae. 

"His or yours would do just as well by now." 

"Bannot's race is very different to either of ours." Nyssa kept her voice level and reasonable. "And I can't even be sure I've picked up the contagion yet, or that it would show up in its early stages if I had. Your blood would provide a much more reliable sample." 

"All right," Dunae conceded. She rolled up her left sleeve with some difficulty. Bannot had fallen asleep and his head slumped against her shoulder, his breathing almost imperceptible, his skin pale. Nyssa hoped it was backlash from his recent regeneration, but it was equally possibly the Syndrome beginning to take its grip. Dunae studiously ignored him, which surprised her a little until she remembered that the Karalian were used to looking after the sick as a matter of course. 

They were also used to medical procedure. The sergeant didn't flinch as Nyssa drew her blood. 

She returned to the work table and stared into the red liquid. It looked perfectly normal. Nothing to see. Yet she shuddered to look upon it. In there lurked the enemy, a scourge that had ruined millions of lives. 

* * *

Luthen followed the Doctor across the grasslands at an awkward, lopsided run, his cybernetics putting him at a distinct disadvantage. 

"Wait!" he yelled at the Doctor's coat-tails. The alien turned around and continued to run, backwards, for several steps, then slowed to a walk. Luthen asked, "What's the hurry, anyway? If your TARDIS is a time machine, what does it matter how long we take? Can't you set it to arrive on the ship at whatever time you please?" 

The Doctor looked appalled. "That would be cheating. Irresponsible behaviour like that creates just the sorts of problems we're trying to avoid." 

"But nobody would _know_." 

"That doesn't mean the meddling isn't still there, imprinted on the timelines." 

Luthen sighed. "Verani," he began, more conversationally, falling into step as the Doctor settled into a brisk stride he could just about match. "Can she really see the future? I mean, Jovanka said the First Councillor had visions, but I thought that was just superstition. Verani, though... she seems to really know things." 

"Yes, she does," the Doctor agreed. "But don't worry, there's nothing magical about Verani's case of second sight. Her Ancestors came from the future, further forward than myself. What Verani calls Sight is nothing more than a genetically programmed racial memory, filled with all the information the Janovians would need to survive... and to die. They couldn't, of course, keep records. Nobody was to know who they were or where they'd come from." He was almost talking to himself as he finished, his voice little more than a murmur. 

Astonished, Luthen asked, "How do you know that?" 

"It's her bloodline. They carry the memories. It had to be genetic. Once I had an idea what the Janovians were, I knew what Verani's powers are really about. She's their control, a living databank. Except she broke. Too mortal... Trust them to overlook that." 

"Control?" 

"To keep them in line. They hid themselves down a historical dead end. Whoever fixed it that way originally must have thought it the only way they could hide - without a future. Verani's bloodline was _meant_ to ensure that everything stayed according to plan." 

"But who or what were they hiding from?" 

The Doctor said, severely, "I have no intention of trying to work that out. I'm trying very hard to forget the little Verani did tell me." 

"But Janovay is a sham? Set up to fool... someone." 

"Persons unknown and to remain unknown, yes. And history itself, of course. They made themselves an inextricable part of universal history, so nobody could remove them before their time. Buried in the past. They must have been very desperate-" 

"Doctor," Luthen warned. "You said you weren't going to think about it." 

"Yes. Indeed. Well, here we are." 

They stood again in front of the blue box. The Doctor raised the bit of metal he'd been swinging in his hand, the double of Jovanka's key, and set it to the lock. The TARDIS opened with a friendly click that Luthen could've sworn sounded almost like a greeting. The Doctor grinned and walked inside. He shrugged off his jacket and hung it on the hat stand with the manner of someone coming home after too long away. 

"Hello, old girl," he said to the air. He flicked a lever on the hexagonal console and the doors slid shut. "Luthen, this is the TARDIS. Say hello nicely." 

Luthen wasn't sure if he was joking. "We've met," he said. "I came here with Jovanka. She had one of those keys, too." 

The Doctor nodded. "They were supposed to use the TARDIS to return to Earth, Tegan's home planet," he explained morosely. "I should have known they'd never be so sensible." 

"I wish I could have saved her," Luthen said. "I'm sorry, Doctor. If I'd been a little quicker... if I'd shot Kweril first... But I hesitated, I was too slow, and she died." 

"I'm hardly going to berate you for not slaughtering another living being," the Doctor said with a frown. He flinched, forehead creasing in pain, and rubbed at his temples before regrouping. "And you shouldn't berate yourself, either. But perhaps you should consider a career change, Luthen. I have a feeling the military is not for you." 

Luthen laughed, but bitterness choked off his mirth in short order. 

The Doctor concentrated on the TARDIS console, hitting switches and squinting through his gold frames at flickering readout screens. The lighted column in the centre of the octagonal console started to rise and fall, and there was a brief groaning, churning noise. "Well, we should be there in a minute." 

Luthen looked up, alarmed. "But we're not moving." The only sensation of movement was a low humming that seemed to reverberate through his bones and his cybernetics. 

"Yes. A smooth trip." The Doctor took his coat from the hat stand and appeared for the first time to notice the blood staining it. With irritation, he tossed it back. It missed the prongs and landed in a heap on the floor. 

He flicked a switch on the console. The column stopped moving and the noise ceased. 

"Come along," he said brightly, heading for the door, and Luthen followed, wondering what his Karalian compatriots would make of the Doctor. 

* * *

SAMPLE 129...   
SUBJECT DIAGNOSIS A-S- CORRUPTED  
PROGNOSIS TERMINAL  
SAMPLE 130...   
SUBJECT DIAGNOSIS FREE FROM A-S- CORRUPTION  
PROGNOSIS NORMAL  
SAMPLE 131...   
SUBJECT DIAGNOSIS A-S- CORRUPTED  
PROGNOSIS TERMINAL 

Nyssa's eyes ached from long hours of close work. She stared at the diagnostic computer's flickering screen as it ran through its examination of her treated samples. She was so tired she almost missed the one that mattered. In the moment it took to register, she was already reading on down the list. Her weary eyes leaped back up the screen as realisation hit. 

She quashed her initial excitement. It could be a mistake. She'd have to repeat the process she'd used for sample 130 several times on different specimens of the Syndrome before she'd know for sure. 

She returned to her notes from 130, doggedly checking and rechecking every detail, knowing the Karalians had never expected her to succeed and she might not get another chance if she made a mistake on her first attempt. Eventually she looked up to Sergeant Dunae, still in the chair by the door with a semi-conscious Bannot slumped against her. 

"I've done it," Nyssa said hoarsely. 

* * *

"What?" Alzen choked, unable to believe what he was hearing. "Don't be ridiculous. Of course she can't have done it." 

"That was my reaction," said Vyrs dryly. His face was twisted in an expression which had never touched his features before - a broad, toothy grin. "Until I'd checked and double checked her results. It's true. Believe it. She's found the cure. In a little less than a day, she read through the results of a century's previous study and had an embryonic version of the formula prepared. I've never seen anything like it. Her people, wherever they are, must be advanced beyond belief." 

Alzen's legs felt abruptly very weak and he found it necessary to sit down. The edge of his desk was nearest, and he almost missed it in his shock. 

"Has she finalized a usable version of the formula?" he asked, abruptly realising the degree of responsibility now weighted upon him. "We have to get this out, quickly as possible. Just think, there are Karalians dying out there - and they don't need to anymore. If anything should happen to this ship, we can't afford for the cure to die with us." 

* * *

Nyssa sighed as she read the computer's analysis of the hurriedly submitted sample and, with minimal fuss, rolled up her own sleeve and injected a dose of the formula. The Syndrome was indeed swift to take hold. It had settled in the cells of her body already, only hours after her first exposure to it. 

She wouldn't have halted to use the formula on herself if Bannot hadn't insisted she do so, illogically afraid that what was happening to him might also begin to take hold upon her. Once done, she returned to adapting the cure for Bannot's Janovian physiology. It was a sideline she wasn't sure the Karalians would care much about, and one which had developed considerable urgency, so she worked through her tiredness while the Karalians were still running around in the initial confusion engendered by the news. 

Bannot was in a bad way, and deteriorating rapidly. It had started about an hour ago, as she was finalizing the last details of the formula. There was no longer any doubt that it was the Syndrome at work; it was _active_ already, thin red lines creeping across his fingers and hands visibly marking the beginnings of the nerve inflammation. 

"Don't worry," she said, afraid her own strain showed in her voice. She was so tired, and concentration was difficult, and she was terrified of making a deadly error. "I've almost done it. You'll be all right, Councillor Bannot." It was not fair that he should die. He had already gone through enough. 

He met the disease with the familiar Janovian calm, eyes closed in silent meditation to control the agony he must surely be in. Dunae had left for a while to spread the news, but had returned and she sat as before, though apparently now by choice rather than orders, looking after Bannot while Nyssa worked. 

Nyssa was racing against time to beat the disease before too much irreversible damage was done. 

"Ready," she gasped finally, as the diagnostic computer spat out a ream of encouragingly positive text. With trembling hands, she transferred a likely amount of the mixture into an injector, and saved Bannot's life and limbs. 

As Bannot relaxed into a healing sleep cradled by the brusque Karalian Sergeant, Nyssa rubbed her eyes, fighting against her own tiredness - and thought, wearily, that the Janovians were certainly very vulnerable to Amnos' Syndrome. 

* * *

"You're the saviour of the Karalian Union," Vyrs said to her as she was escorted through the corridors of the ship, flanked by the head scientist and Captain Alzen. "There aren't the words to thank you for what you've done." 

"All I want is to get back to Janovay to my friends," Nyssa said. "As soon as possible. I'm happy to have been able to help you, but my friends were in trouble when I left. I have to return." 

She also needed sleep. It had been over two days since she'd slept. Exhaustion dragged her steps, and only her sense of triumph kept her on her feet, but she did not want to dilute the focus of her request. The reward of release had not been in her mind when she'd offered to help the Karalians, nevertheless that hope leaped up in her now. 

Karalians peered at her through open doors and glass observation windows as they walked through the ship, looking on with an awe Nyssa found bizarre and uncomfortable. 

_Saviour of the Karalian Union... _

"We will return you to your people. It's the least we can do," Vyrs said congenially. Dr Vyrs was a changed man. The bitterness that had animated his thin frame had evaporated in the space of an hour, alongside the Syndrome itself. 

She hoped the Doctor was all right. The Janovians obviously hadn't managed to force him to destroy the Karalian fleet, but then she had never imagined they would. Still, she worried about what he'd been planning when she and Tegan left him. She wondered if anything could be done now for Tegan, who'd been over a day inside the temporal device. 

"And we must distribute your cure to the people of Janovay," Alzen added. Nyssa, distracted, mid-yawn, barely heard him. 

* * *

Sergeant Jisa Dunae remained where she was after Nyssa left with Captain Alzen and Doctor Vyrs. For a long time she sat unmoving, staring at nothing; conscious of Bannot's weight across her lap, of the ever-present chill of the unfeeling metal which began just above her knee joints. 

Amnos' Syndrome was gone from her body. She was immune to it now. She'd never suffer its agonies again. 

She'd been the first living subject the cure had been tested upon. Nyssa had been unsure, but she'd insisted upon volunteering her services. It was the point when she'd realised all of it was for real. It was happening. The Syndrome was defeated, after years of savage battle. 

Dunae wasn't sure what she would do. She sat and thought, numbly, of a future where it was no longer necessary to fight. For the first time in her life she would have a choice. 

Bannot shifted and groaned and blinked himself awake. Awkwardly, Dunae helped him to sit up. He thanked her with a gentle, crooked smile and calmly studied his hands. He showed them to her wordlessly. They were covered in angry red Syndrome lesions that would soften over time to pale white scar tissue. But it was no longer getting any worse. 

"She saved us," Bannot said quietly. His voice seemed to carry peace within it. "It's such a terrible thing, that all her people are dead. They must have been something." 

Dunae wasn't sure what he was talking about. There was a jumble of emotion inside her at the speed and scope of the day's events. She realised with faint horror that not only was she grinning like an idiot, but moisture had begun to leak from her eyes. 

Bannot looked at her with concern. 

"I'm all right," she said. "Really. It's gone. Everything's all right. But it's _gone_. What are we going to do with our lives now?" 

* * *

"This is the communications room," Alzen said. "I never thought this would be the scene of the historic event, though of course I dreamed it. I suppose every ship's commanding officer does." 

Nyssa looked around the equipment lining the walls - an elaborate communication system, by the standards of Karalian technology, maintained in far better repair than most of the rest of the ship. So maintained for just the purpose for which it was about to be used, she realised. With this equipment they could broadcast information to every Karalian ship and planetary base. 

That information being the cure to Amnos' Syndrome; the formula which Vyrs held in his hand, contained within a squat, round disc. Nyssa had helped Vyrs to translate the cure into data that Karalian scientists would be able to interpret. 

Alzen took the disc with an unnecessarily elaborate care and fed it into the machine. He tapped at the console, making small lights dance. The display called up on the screen showed a starburst of lines radiating out from a central point, connecting to an array of variously distant objects. Karalian ships and installations in relation to their own present location; too many of them to count. Those dots represented thousands of Karalian labs and Captains and Chief Scientists. Nyssa stared at the network that would spread the formula around the stars. 

"This button-" Alzen tapped the console next to a red control "-will broadcast the cure to every Karalian communication system. I'd like you to do the honours." 

Too tired to be awed by ceremony, Nyssa leaned forward and wearily pressed the button, changing irrevocably the face and the future of the Karalian Union. 

_End of Part 3_


	4. Making History

DISCLAIMER: All Doctor Who characters and concepts belong to the BBC. The ones you don't recognise are mine. Especially Verani. No profit, just borrowing, yadda, yadda, yadda. 

* * *

**

Doctor Who: Janovay

**

_Part 4. Making History_

**Chapter 13**

_Her senses were assaulted by a darkness that carried within it an infinity of alien impressions. The ebb and flow of the time currents swirled around and through her and she could see them, feel them, taste them in a way that utilised none of her physical senses - surely the only way her human brain could process these alien sensations, as she had no body to sense with here. _

She was dead... 

No. But she remembered dying, and that had been real. The memory of the energy blast hitting her chest, feeling initially like a blow from a solid object; it's impact knocking the breath from her. She had looked down at torn flesh and scorched blood and broken white points of ribs. She'd felt only shock. She barely had time to feel pain before the darkness. 

She remembered in photographic detail the last image imprinted on her gaze before death, the Karalian youth staring down at her with horror twisting his face. 

But she wasn't dead. 

She was inside the machine. 

She remembered... details from before, crisp and clear as though she experienced them anew. Nyssa's voice rang again through her thoughts, explaining the temporal device. She'd said the device anchored the body of its operator... which meant what it transported through time... might be nothing more than a copy. 

A projected image of her had died. 

Tegan quailed as a bright wave of temporal unrest washed through her dissolute consciousness. Was this the fabric of time and space through which the TARDIS travelled? Was that what the device tapped into? 

She wondered how she was going to get out. If she even was. Either something had happened to Nyssa or she hadn't been able to figure out the device, and Nyssa had said it wouldn't be possible to control the machine from inside. Tegan was only human, after all, and the device had been designed for those with time senses, like the Doctor. 

The Doctor. She'd failed him, failed to complete Nyssa's plan. The problems she'd encountered using the device had confused her, driving the formula from her head. Ironically enough, she could remember it perfectly now. No delusional Mara plagued her, and her thoughts had a clarity she'd seldom experienced. 

Yet now she could do nothing but exist, hanging alone in this strange nowhere, watching the fluctuations of bright strands of time. 

No, not alone. She was startled to recognise another presence. It wasn't human, nor even alive. She could not perceive it in any way she would be able to explain, but it was there. Close by. No, more than close; connected to her. 

The machine itself. The temporal device.

She tried to dampen her incredulity. The concept of machine consciousness should not be so strange to her. After all, the Doctor always claimed the TARDIS was 'alive'. 

"Hello?" She projected a slightly wobbly greeting into the darkness, surprised to 'hear' the words she had no ears to hear nor lips to form. "Can you help me?" 

It made no attempt to reply directly - she didn't know if it could - but it did reply. It felt as though a door onto a different state of perception had been opened up. Tegan was abruptly aware of the workings of the temporal device, of the vortex around her, of how all this flow of time against the darkness affected the world she was accustomed to perceiving. 

Previously invisible pathways melted into view and, struggling to take it all in, she realised she'd been granted the control over the device's functions that Nyssa had deemed impossible. 

"Thank you!" she called to the essence around her, hoping it understood her gratitude if not her words. 

She arrowed a piece of her consciousness up towards the light. 

* * *

The _Vardito's_ corridors looked different to Luthen, walking through them now with the Doctor. They seemed smaller than they had been, claustrophobic spaces with stale air and an unpleasant antiseptic smell. It was hard to credit he'd spent much of the last few days wanting to be back here. This world, which had been his own before he came to Janovay, seemed different to him now. 

In this world, he was supposed to be a soldier. His actions and failures on Janovay had proven he was no such thing, proven furthermore that nor did he want to be. 

He carried his laser trained upon the Doctor, whose own genial suggestion such a bluff had been. Anyone they might run into would see a Karalian soldier escorting a prisoner. Luthen was suspicious of such trust. Did the Doctor presume to know his mind better than he knew it himself? He was uneasily trying to decide whether or not to turn the bluff into reality. 

He questioned, once again, his own motives in accompanying the alien. Was it to betray him, to provide what damage-control he could, to help him? The problem was, he trusted the Doctor, doubting neither his sincerity nor that he knew what he was doing. 

The TARDIS had materialised in one of the little-used cargo holds away from the main areas of the ship, and they'd walked from there through deserted corridors. Luthen was trying to steer towards the main lab where alien captives would be kept, but it was never an easy matter to find your way on a ship the size of a small city and the unfamiliar starting point had baffled his recollection of the ship's layout. 

"How does it feel to be home?" the Doctor asked in a low murmur, his sympathetic tone suggesting he'd already guessed the answer. "You... don't have to stay, you know." 

"They're my people. I can't just run away. Even if they only want me to kill for them." He laughed bitterly. "Besides, I've only got a few more years to live. Probably less, away from the Union. Only Karalians know how to arrest the Syndrome. And once the disease becomes active again, I'll be infectious. Unclean." 

The Doctor flinched and looked away, nodding. The silence served them well as they turned the next corner onto a long section of corridor where two men slouched by a door open onto someone's untidy crew quarters. Engaged in an energetic discussion, the Karalians didn't immediately notice the newcomers. 

Luthen recognised one of them, a senior soldier he knew distantly from watch duties, who'd made jokes about his relatively untried status. Luthen recalled his name as Karzl. He was somewhere in his late twenties, and there wasn't much of him left that wasn't synthetic. 

He and his companion were positively aglow with excitement. When they saw Luthen and the Doctor, they hurried to meet them. Luthen's chest tightened. 

"Ryn Luthen!" Karzl exclaimed. "There's a face I never expected to see again. We thought you were dead. Disintegrated. They included you in the memorial service. Very moving it was too, you should've seen it." 

"No thanks," Luthen replied, feeling his face break into a weak grin despite all. Karzl was not a bad sort, his jokes aside. "I ended up on Janovay. Don't ask me how. What's... what _happened_ here?" 

Karzl clapped him on the back with painful enthusiasm, took the gun from his hands and set it aside. "Everything. Everything's happened, Ryn. You don't need that anymore. The cure's been found. One of the aliens we picked up on Janovay did it. Nyssa of Traken." He spoke the name with awed reverence. 

"Oh, _no_," the Doctor groaned. "We're late. Something must have gone wrong. There shouldn't have been _time_, not yet, for her to develop a cure. I thought I registered some unusual temporal fluctuations in the TARDIS - they must have boosted us ahead a few hours, maybe even more." He patted at his coat pockets, realised they weren't there, and looked plaintively at Karzl and the other Karalian. "I don't suppose either of you chaps has a chronometric flux reader? No?" 

Luthen felt a pressure lift from his mind with the knowledge that the choice had been taken from him. He couldn't be sorry that they were too late, even if there was a possibility this would spell disaster. The Karalians, mystified, were looking to him for answers. He said, "This is Nyssa's friend, the Doctor. He brought me up from Janovay on his spacecraft." 

The Doctor clasped the hands of each in polite greeting and said seriously, "I need to speak to your Captain and to Nyssa. Several hours ago, in fact. But as soon as possible will have to do." 

Karzl's confused gaze flickered between them. His doubts seemed to relent at Luthen's grim nod. 

"Nyssa of Traken is resting. I'll take you to Captain Alzen." 

* * *

"Hello! Captain Alzen, I presume?" remarked the dishevelled, bloodstained figure who'd burst into Alzen's office, interrupting his discussion with Bannot about relations between their races. Alzen was caught sufficiently off-guard that the stranger had already captured his hand in a rather bloody grip and shaken it before he had chance to object. "I'm the Doctor," the stranger continued breathlessly, apparently too distracted to notice Alzen wiping his hand off onto his uniform. "This is Luthen," he added as a Karalian soldier sidled into the room behind him. "But then you probably already know that. I believe he's from this ship." 

Alzen cast a disapproving glance at the young Karalian, whose appalling slouch and permanently puzzled expression were indeed familiar, though not the awkwardness with which he held his cybernetic arm, nor the patch of blood on his uniform shoulder. The uniform was in even scruffier a state than usual. He frowned, remembering. "Aren't you the one who-" 

The soldier flinched and, shifting with embarrassment, mumbled "Yeah," before Alzen could finish. 

"Ryn Luthen!" Sergeant Dunae uncharacteristically yelped the greeting. "But you were dead... I saw it happen." 

"It's a long story," Luthen said. "Glad you came through all right, Sarge." 

The youth looked different, Alzen observed. Same slouch, same distant eyes, but different nonetheless. Ryn Luthen had been a slobbish soldier who'd never seen a battle before the skirmish in which he 'died'. This young man looked battle-weary and determined. 

Alzen was snapped out of his thoughts by the Doctor exclaiming with an odd distress, "Councillor Bannot! Oh, no." 

The Janovian smiled lopsidedly and spread out his arms in a helpless half-shrug. "Regeneration, Doctor. I'm not who I was." 

The Doctor shot forward to grab one of Bannot's outstretched hands, which he studied intently. Alzen began to doubt the stranger's sanity, or at least his health. The man certainly looked rather feverish; a sheen of moisture glistened on his forehead and his skin was pale. He slowly raised his eyes to meet Bannot's. "These scars," he said, words clipped. "Amnos' Syndrome?" 

Bannot nodded. 

"High vulnerability?" 

"Yes, Doctor," Alzen said. "The Janovian race -" 

"That explains it." The Doctor's face twisted into haggard lines. "This isn't good at all. I need to talk to you, Captain Alzen, about something very important. And I need to see Nyssa." 

* * *

"Wake up, Nyssa." Somebody was shaking her shoulder, a little less than gently. The voice which intruded her dreamless sleep was taut with urgency. She blinked her way to wakefulness and stared up into a face she knew well, although it did not usually have such deep lines of worry and illness cut into it. 

"Doctor," she said, sitting up, her thoughts still muzzy and unfocused. "What are you doing here?" She looked around carefully to ascertain that she was indeed in the small quarters Captain Alzen had shown her to. She'd fallen asleep fully-clothed on top of the bunk the instant he left. The Doctor was the last person she'd expected to see upon waking. "No. You shouldn't be here. The-" The Syndrome, she thought. But then she remembered she'd cured Bannot. He was in no immediate danger. 

He smiled, but the gesture was strained. "Nyssa," he said heavily, and she was taken aback to hear him address her with such despair. 

The Doctor sighed. His anger drained away. "So you've slain your dragon. 'Saviour of the Karalian Union.'" 

The words, spoken gently, still managed to cut. She said, "If you're referring to Amnos' Syndrome, yes, I did it. I had no choice. These people-" 

"I _know_ that, Nyssa. And there's nothing to be done now. You can't take it back. The future's already set to unfold without the Syndrome, maybe without the invasion of Janovay." 

"Janovay?" she stammered. Realisation hit her. Bannot's vulnerability to the disease, the _Janovians'_ vulnerability. The Janovians had been wiped out. "Doctor! Captain Alzen said he was going to distribute the cure on Janovay. There might be time to stop him-" She faltered. She didn't want to stop him. 

"I don't want to either," the Doctor said. "But we may have to, to repair what damage we can." 

"There must be another way." Nyssa stood up, restlessly. She'd had little more than an hour's sleep, but she no longer felt tired. She noticed a Karalian soldier standing awkwardly outside the doorway and, behind him, Alzen and Bannot. "Surely it's only a little thing, historically speaking. Maybe it won't be so bad. Nothing's happened yet, after all." 

"You've seen what the Janovians are," the Doctor leaned in close and lowered his voice. "You saw Bannot regenerate. This is all tied up in my people's future, somehow. I shouldn't be meddling. You've inadvertently caused a very difficult situation, Nyssa." 

Alzen pushed through the doorway, drawing the Doctor's attention. "What are you saying that you can't share with us?" 

The ragged-looking Karalian soldier dared to place a restraining hand on his arm, which he shook off angrily. Alzen's earlier good cheer had vanished. As well it might, Nyssa thought, when he was faced with an alien who brought with him the message that their miracle cure was a dangerous error. Time Lords, even the Doctor, could be high-handed with individuals who didn't understand their way of looking at the wider issues. 

The Doctor waved his empty hands in a pacifying gesture. "Nothing, I assure you, that has anything to do with your situation." 

Alzen glowered at him for a moment longer, then nodded slowly. "So you're saying we _shouldn't_ distribute the cure on Janovay?" 

"No!" Nyssa moaned miserably. 

"We have to," the ragged Karalian said. "We can't leave them all to die. You don't know the Syndrome, Doctor. You don't know what it's like." 

The Doctor sighed, looking around for allies and evidently finding none. Nyssa couldn't guess at what he was thinking. "We-" he began. He didn't get any further. 

That was when Nyssa noticed the ghostly figure beginning to coalesce in the room amongst them, and let out a muted cry of horror. 

* * *

The Doctor had been gone for many hours, and Verani grew more concerned by each, gazing out of her window into Janovay's sky, though the Karalian ships were imperceptible in the daylight. 

She'd taken another dose of the Zayol some time ago, after first trying to ignore the pain as long as she could, aware the Doctor must also be feeling the deprivation. But it had grown too intense and so she gave in to it, finding small comfort in knowing it took a long time to die from Zayol poisoning. 

She'd come here to her chamber after several hours spent helping Crivthen with the preparations for Janovay's last days. It was a small, plain room without much furnishing, but she found its sparseness as restful as she did the view from its high window overlooking the hills and uncultivated grasslands. 

Her solace was broken, uniquely, by a figure walking through the door who didn't stop to open it first. 

Verani studied the intruder with mild surprise. She was aware that many things were possible in the universe. She did, after all, see the future, and was not overly astonished by a person walking through an apparently solid object. What was rather more curious to her was the fact she recognised that person as the Doctor's former assistant, Luthen's Jovanka, reportedly dead. 

The human stood, glaring, arms folded, stance aggressive. "I'm looking for the Doctor." A quiver in her voice ruined the implicit threat. "What have you done with him?" 

"I have done nothing with him. He left of his own free will. Do not concern yourself, he will return." Verani approached the young woman, narrowing her eyes. There was something not quite right about her. As the light was shifted by cloud moving over the suns, Verani grasped what it was. There was a transparency about Jovanka's figure. If she looked hard enough, she could see the wall through her. 

"What are you gawping at?" 

"I heard you were dead," Verani said. "Kweril swore he had killed you. I was appalled with him, of course." 

"Of course," the human mimicked with a distinct lack of conviction. "I'm not dead. I'm still stuck inside the temporal device in your vaults. But if I see that lizard-man again I sure intend to give him a piece of my mind. You can't just go around shooting people! And while we're on the subject, what did your mutant crocodile do with that Karalian kid I was with - is he all right?" 

"Luthen is with the Doctor. When I saw them last, both were well, although I think the Doctor is in need of more Zayol now." 

"Where've they gone?" Jovanka paced agitatedly and seemed not to notice that her shoulder swung through a wall as she spun around. "I have to find them." 

Verani shrugged. "They are no longer on the planet. They left in the TARDIS for the Karalian ship." 

"Karalian ship?" 

"A lot has occurred since you... did not die. The fleet arrived. They're in orbit above Janovay now - do not trouble yourself to look out of the window, you cannot see them from here. A scout ship took Nyssa and Bannot as specimens. The Doctor went after them." 

"He would," Jovanka muttered. "When did they leave?" 

"Hours ago." 

"Right." For an instant her face was strangely without animation, still and blank, then she snapped back to normal. "Right," she said again, forcefully. "You can show me where this Kweril's got to. I've a bone to pick with him." 

"Then you are not going after the Doctor and Luthen?" Verani asked, bewildered. 

Jovanka grinned broadly. "I am. It's done. Well, in progress. This time machine's really nothing but a big old photocopier. It works by Xeroxing you to a point in time, not by transporting you there. This is only a projection of me. The real me is inside the machine. But - I can make as many copies as I want to. Or as I can keep track of." 

Verani made a noncommittal noise, other questions uppermost in her mind. "Can you take any Zayol to the Doctor?" 

"It can't transport me over space. Here and now, I have no more means to get to that ship than you do, and I can hardly carry things reliably in this state." She shrugged helplessly. One of her hands went through the wall again, and Verani saw her point. "I have some control right now, but these projections are getting more unstable by the minute. I thought I was dying, at first." Her bark of laughter was strained. "Silly, I suppose. I don't understand the scientific stuff, I bet Nyssa would've known what was happening. I was much more solid then, but I was still fading in and out... I suppose I would've just been back in the temporal device if the projection faded out completely." She shook her head. "The Doctor should be all right yet for a while, though - I mean, the stuff takes time to work?" 

"Yes," Verani agreed. 

"Now - Kweril," Jovanka said, backtracking sharply. 

"Kweril has absconded. Nobody knows where he is." 

"Well, then we'll find him," the human said intractably. "He could've killed me. Come on, you owe it to us. You got us into this. You brought _him_ into this." 

After a moment's hesitation, Verani nodded. 

* * *

He'd waited hours before the tower-room was cleared of observers. Hidden in one of the small chambers off the base of the stairs, he watched for who went up and who came back down until he was sure it was empty. The Janovians were all too occupied listening to Crivthen drawling on, or else they sat meekly in their homes, meditating, waiting for death to arrive. 

The weapon was a bulky, unwieldy object but he had carried it alone from where the Doctor had left it disconnected and lifeless under a tarpaulin, down the steps of the watch-tower and all the long distance across the Janovian city to the paved square where he'd landed his ship. The Janovians had been no help. Verani or the Doctor had said something to them, and they ignored him now, after all he'd done and tried to do for these people. 

He'd spent hours, after that heavy labour, trying to accomplish what the Doctor would not. He didn't understand the workings of the weapon. It was dangerous to meddle, considering how little he knew, but he meddled nonetheless. What did it matter, when the damned Karalians were going to destroy this world and himself along with it soon enough? They might as well go down fighting. Blown to atoms before the contamination had a chance to get its jaws into them. At least this way there was a chance they might not have to die at all. 

Kweril had worked with many alien technologies, and although this weapon was unlike any he had seen before, he was accustomed to extrapolation in his trade and the Doctor had already finished much of the work. All the weapon needed, he concluded, was a power source. And that he had in the drive core of his small space vessel. 

It took time to hook it up to the engine. All the while, his nerves were on edge with the awareness of the Karalian ships, stationery and unsuspecting, somewhere above. They might not remain so for much longer. They'd had hours and hours now to study Janovay and its people. Soon the attack would begin. 

He finally stood back from the tangle of wires and cables strewn across the floor of the drive room. Using the weapon might burn it out first time, he wasn't sure how much power was needed. It might not work at all, just sit there as lifeless as the Doctor had left it, no use to anyone. Or it might, if he had connected something disastrously wrongly, let out its destructive power in a local explosion which only obliterated his ship and a small segment of the city around it. 

Kill or cure, he thought grimly, fiddling with the targeting device on the weapon. He'd taken co-ordinates of the fleet from the top of the watch-tower, and he fed a set into the weapon now, powering it up. Watched the energy readout begin to rise to real destructive force, hardly daring to breathe. 

It was working... power was getting through. He tapped at the keys in a likely-seeming sequence to activate the weapon, and prayed silently to the spirits of the billion Mirosan dead. _Die, Karalians, die_... 

* * *

The Doctor stared at the ethereal shape of a person forming next to Nyssa. It was growing more solid by the second, and was beginning to look very familiar. He set a steadying hand on Nyssa's shoulder, not that his hand was too steady itself. "No need to worry. I have a feeling this apparition is benign." 

The others looked on with confusion gradually replaced by other emotions as the figure materialised in full. Alzen's brow furrowed into deep chasms of annoyance, Bannot stared with frank curiosity, and Luthen's face spread into a grin of delighted recognition. 

"Tegan!" Nyssa exclaimed, incalculable relief in her voice. 

"Boo," Tegan said, grinning. 

"Tegan. You're all right." One worry evaporated from the Doctor's mind even as another crystallised. "However did you do that?" 

"I think I'm getting the hang of this temporal device thing now. I've been here all the time, just a little out of phase with the world. I even hitched a lift." 

The Doctor blinked. "So you were on board in the TARDIS," he said. Stopped. Breathed slowly. "The temporal distortion..." He reflected that he must be in a worse state than he'd thought, to have failed to sense her. Verani's Zayol poisoning had been beginning to make a nuisance of itself again in the last hour or so. 

"Well," she said, a little shamefully. "I had to get to this ship, but the device couldn't just, you know, zap me here like that." She clicked her insubstantial fingers; the sound they made was quite as substantial as ever. 

"Yes. Quite. So you went back in time? And stayed a step outside the timestream so we wouldn't see you." 

"I didn't know it would effect the TARDIS, Doctor. I'm sorry. But I was only keeping your warnings in mind and trying not to alter anything that had already happened!" 

"You were still there, Tegan! The fact we didn't see you is irrelevant!" 

"Well, I had no choice!" she snapped. "The temporal device only projects in time, not in space. I had to come here in the TARDIS or not at all, and I thought you might need my _help_!" 

"You shouldn't have come here at all," the Doctor said crossly. "You have no idea what you're tampering with. The dangers-" 

Nyssa said mournfully, "Oh, Doctor. Tegan's all right! Please let's not argue about things that can't be changed now anyway." She turned to Tegan. "I'm so glad you're safe!" she exclaimed, reaching to hug her friend only to stumble and blink in amazement as she clutched at a form as substantial as mist. Off-balance, she withdrew her hands. "Tegan?" 

"Whoops. Sorry. This projection's a bit unstable." Tegan's expression hardened with concentration, and she caught Nyssa's arms to help her balance; turned the gesture into a return hug. "I'm glad you're safe, too. I was afraid for you when I heard the Karalians had you. Although I met one of them and he wasn't so bad." 

"Jovanka." A little hesitantly, Luthen pushed his way into the room. 

She grinned. "It's the Cyborg Kid himself. Are you all right? You don't look so good." 

"You know him?" asked Nyssa, with confusion. "How do you know him?" 

"Long story." Tegan rolled her eyes. 

"Yes, and one we have little time for now," the Doctor said. "I'm sorry to interrupt all the friendly reunions for the comparatively petty issue of the imminent cataclysmic danger to the fabric of time and space, but-" 

"But nothing," Alzen snapped, finally finding his voice. He looked rather to be on the verge of smoke coming out of his ears. "Who is she and how did she get here? I've had enough of strangers finding their way past my security systems. How did you come to be on my ship?" He reached to grab Tegan's shoulder and she glared at him as his arm went straight through her. 

"Calm down, Captain," the Doctor said hurriedly as Tegan opened her mouth preparatory to giving Alzen a piece of her mind. Probably a loud piece, from past example. "She's currently trapped in a machine inside the very Vaults you came to Janovay to plunder. There's nothing to concern yourself with, I assure you. I sincerely doubt there are many temporal devices around to threaten your security. Now, we really must address the issue of Janovay-" 

"I've just remembered, Doctor!" Tegan exclaimed. "I have to tell you-" 

"_Janovay_, Tegan. I-" 

His voice was drowned out by a blaring alarm that filled the room with noise. The Karalians stiffened to attention, their expressions freezing to robotic grimaces. 

Tegan threw her insubstantial hands over her ears. "What on Earth-?" 

"We're under attack!" Alzen snapped. "I have to get to the command deck." He looked around at the group, his suspicious gaze lingering on the Doctor. "Dunae, bring them along. I want them where I can see them." He turned and hared off down the corridor. 

"You heard," Dunae uneasily addressed the group, fingering the gun holstered at her hip but not drawing it. A signal passed to Luthen evidently informed him to keep guard at the rear of the group, and he fell to the back with some amusement. 

The Karalian sergeant could set quite a pace for someone with prosthetic legs. The Doctor hastened to keep up with her, eager to know what was going on. The alarm was still assaulting his ears. "I say!" he yelled, "Your attack alarm is certainly alarming, Sergeant!" 

He was aware of animated conversation taking place between Nyssa, Tegan and Luthen, behind them. He was a little surprised by the warmth that seemed to exist between his companion and the failed soldier. He heard Luthen apologise profusely for getting her killed and she replied, "Forget it. I'm still here." 

The Doctor, though immensely relieved to see Tegan relatively safe if rather transparent, remained concerned there might still be unforeseen problems with the temporal device. Who knew what kind of damage might have been done to her? She should never have meddled with dangerous time technology, not for his sake. He didn't want the blood of any more friends on his hands. Adric's death had been a hard enough blow. 

They arrived at the command deck to find Captain Alzen in the midst of an array of subordinates, shouting orders and listening to verbal reports, sometimes simultaneously. 

The Doctor looked around him. As the nerve centre of such a vast ship, the command deck was less than impressive. It was relatively small, though bigger than the TARDIS console room. A view screen that seemed to fill the entirety of one wall displayed an enhanced image of Janovay and the array of Karalian ships in orbit around it. One of the ships was breaking up in a series of small, bright explosions, their pattern consistent with the after-effects of a bolt from an energy weapon targeting a crucial part of the vessel. Sparks of light shooting away from it had to be the escape capsules launched as the Karalians abandoned the damaged vessel. 

"They're heading towards Janovay," Nyssa breathed, her hands rising to her face in shock. Her fingernails dug tiny indentations in her cheeks. "If any of them carries the active Syndrome the Janovians will be wiped out!" 

The Doctor nodded slowly but said only, "What's happening?" 

"Shots fired from the planet," a nearby Karalian technician supplied, monotone. 

"From the _planet_?" Luthen repeated. "The Janovians wouldn't-" 

"Someone would," the Doctor said grimly. 

Tegan flinched from whatever his expression let slip. "No," she said, grabbing his arm. "She didn't. It's not Verani. It isn't the Janovians doing this." 

"How do you-?" the Doctor asked at the same time Alzen turned on them and snapped, "Who the _Hell_ is it, then? The fleet are powering up weapons to raze that city to the ground!" 

"They mustn't!" Nyssa exclaimed. "Tell them, Captain. _Tell them_!" 

The Doctor opened his mouth to belay that. 

"Another shot launched from the planet," the technician announced, squinting at a readout screen. "Tracking..." 

Alzen's frown softened as he looked at Nyssa. "All right." he said, gruff but acquiescing. Nyssa's hold over the Karalians made them putty in her hands. His hand slapped the control to open a communication channel. "Attention all ships. Request that no fire is to be returned upon the planet. We have information indicating the Janovian populace are not responsible for this attack." 

"Tracking..." 

A clamour of protests from the comm. Casting a wild look around the others, Nyssa stepped forward and spoke. "The Captain is right. You mustn't open fire." 

The Doctor moved to pull her back, and she struggled to wrench her arm from his grasp. 

"Who is this?" a single hard voice silenced the clamour. 

Alzen paled slightly. "Admiral Kanos, I-" 

"Nyssa of Traken!" Nyssa shouted. "My name is Nyssa of Traken! You recognise that, don't you? The Janovian people are peaceful, you mustn't harm them!" 

"Tracking..." The Karalian read out a series of co-ordinates in an increasingly strained voice. 

"Prepare for impact," Alzen said into a speaker, and his expression was bleak as his voice resounded throughout the ship. 

* * *

**Chapter 14**

"We're running around in circles," Jovanka grumbled. "And I'll bet he's doing the same trying to avoid us." 

Verani felt inclined to agree. They'd been hours scouring the city for Kweril. Some of her people said he'd been near the watch-tower earlier, but he wasn't there now. "Perhaps the Karalians took him too?" she suggested. It would be an ironic kind of justice. 

"They didn't." 

Verani shrugged and didn't ask how she knew. Jovanka had been tight-mouthed and her concentration was erratic, her gaze constantly unfocused. Events elsewhere seemed to be taking up a lot of her attention. "We should search again the places that were searched earlier, in case he doubled back." 

Jovanka nodded and they began the walk back through the quiet streets towards the centre of the city. 

Above the rooftops, a fierce arrow of light shot up into the sky, disappearing beyond sight. The two women exchanged confused glances. "What was that?" Jovanka demanded. 

"Energy weapon. From its angle of trajectory, it came from the city... not far away from here..." Verani's senses blurred back into normal focus and she shook her head to clear it. 

"That energy gun thing the Doctor was working on!" Jovanka yelped. She started running and her voice floated back to Verani, "Kweril must have found some way to make it work!" 

The First Councillor absorbed the information with mixed emotions, and sprinted after her. 

They were nearing the small square where Kweril's ship stood when a second blaze of light followed the course of the first. This time, its source was unmistakeably Kweril's ship itself. Verani caught up with Jovanka as they ran out across the paved square. 

The hatch-like door of the ship was closed, and when she pulled at the handle it was to find it securely locked. "Let me," whispered Jovanka. Closing her eyes in concentration, she pushed through the solid door, hands stretched out before her. There was trepidation on her face in the instant before it passed through the metal and she disappeared from sight. After a pause, the door slid open. Verani slipped inside. 

The cramped interior was obviously lived-in. The little spaceship was a home, not a transport, strewn with garments and other oddments of occupation, and possessing a fusty smell. Mechanical noises emanated from the engine workings at the back. Somebody was undoubtedly there. Verani joined Jovanka at the interior doorway. 

Surrounded by a forest of machinery with its wire-and-circuit guts spilling out over the sparse floor-space, Kweril hunched over the base of the weapon the Doctor had retrieved from the Vaults, feeding information into the keypad. The shaft of the weapon was aimed up in the air, and a panel in the top of the ship was wrenched open to reveal blue sky and pale wisps of cloud, Karalian battleships invisible beyond. 

As they watched, Kweril gave a satisfied grunt and reached for a control on the weapon's side. 

* * *

Luthen watched helplessly as the bright point of light on the screen grew too close to the larger mass of the ship for the sensors to distinguish it. There was a long moment in which the command deck was gripped in silent immobility, everyone ceasing even to breathe as they waited for the impact. 

Then, the _Vardito_ shuddered and lurched. The occupants of the command deck were thrown into disarray by the jolt. Luthen fell to one knee, landing heavily with a clang of metal upon metal that reverberated through to his teeth. He'd almost caught his balance when the ill-treated ship protested with another violent shake, throwing him sprawling to the floor. 

Dazed, he could do nothing but spread-eagle his limbs for maximum purchase and try to hold on while the ship was rocked and bucked with smaller tremors. The lights flickered off as the power abruptly cut out and they were pitched into total darkness. There was a whine as auxiliary power built up to cut in, and a brief, blinding flicker before the muffled sound of another explosion left them again in darkness. After a space of seconds that seemed much longer, the ship quieted to emitting only soft groans of stressed metal, and Luthen cautiously raised his head from the floor to find himself faced by a thick curtain of dark in which nothing could be distinguished. 

"Is everyone all right?" asked the Doctor from somewhere behind him, pain underlining his voice. 

"I'm okay," Luthen said, and listened as the Doctor's question drew further murmurs of assent from Nyssa, Alzen, Jovanka - _Tegan_, he reminded himself - and Bannot, and from a few of the techs. 

Alzen said, "There are flashlights in the emergency locker." Noises of clumsy movement and of the Captain's strained cursing gave texture to the dark. Luthen tried to sit up and affirmed that it wasn't merely dizziness that disoriented him. The floor was tilted at an extreme angle. 

A moment later, a small beam of light sprang into existence over to the left. Alzen stood, somehow upright on the wildly canted floor, playing the beam of the flashlight in his hand around the command deck. When the beam landed on Luthen, he nodded curtly and tossed over a spare flashlight. 

Dazzled by the beam and still dazed from the attack, Luthen fielded the catch clumsily. Pinning it between his uncooperative cybernetic hand and his chest, he fumbled at the flashlight's switches and managed to coax a beam from it. He switched hands and awkwardly rolled over onto hands and knees, swinging the beam where he thought the Doctor's voice had come from. 

The Doctor had one arm hooked around Nyssa's waist to keep her from falling down the slope of the floor. His other arm was wedged in the twisted metal of a panel join bent out of shape by the impact. A sharp edge had opened up a slash across his wrist which made it look like he'd been trying to kill himself again. He must have grabbed on for balance, then been caught, unable to relinquish his hold. Nyssa had twisted around in his grasp and stretched across him, wrapping her hand over the injury to reduce the flow of blood. Her knuckles were white with the force she applied, her face taut with tension, but the cut was longer than her hand it blood leaked around the edges. 

Luthen crawled clumsily across to them, distantly aware that Alzen was crouched swearing over the defunct comms system. He bolstered Nyssa's legs to help her balance, allowing the Doctor to relax his grip. Nyssa retained hers. They managed with some difficulty to sit down on the angled floor without loosing the gaping wound, which Nyssa held closed now with both hands. The Doctor's face, even in the dim light, was grey. 

"I need bandages, cloth, _something_. Quickly," Nyssa said. The Doctor awkwardly reached into a pocket to pull out a large handkerchief with question marks on it, which she accepted dubiously. 

Alzen, already rummaging again in the emergency locker, said, "There's a med box in here somewhere." 

"Tegan?" Nyssa looked around for her friend. "Can you help me with this?" 

"I'm on it." She emerged into Luthen's light beam, her feet skidding as she climbed up the floor. Alzen barked a warning as he tossed a med box to her and she flailed her arms to catch it. They passed straight through on the first attempt, and she barely managed to avoid letting it fall. She opened it and pulled out a roll of bandaging which, leaning forward, she applied to the Doctor's wrist. 

"Nyssa?" Bannot's voice called over from the block of the room still in darkness. 

"Councillor Bannot! Are you all right?" 

"I'm all right, but Jisa's unconscious. I could use some help and some light." 

"You go to them, Luthen," the Doctor said tightly, snatching Alzen's thrown flashlight out of the air with his free hand, eliciting a squeak of protest from Nyssa as he jostled her bandaging. He switched it on and pointed it down at his own injured wrist. The beam shook with the same tremors as his hand. 

Luthen, aiming his flashlight towards the Janovian's voice, crawled over to where Dunae and Bannot had been thrown into a messy heap in the crook between wall and floor. Bannot, relatively intact, bent over the still form of the sergeant. The lower half of his face was bloody, his nose now crooked at an odd angle that was going to make his features more irregular than before, if he lived long enough for it to heal. The Janovian seemed oblivious to the blood as he examined Dunae in the beam of torchlight. Luthen reached him as he turned her over. 

The sergeant's eyes were shut, but she was breathing and had no visible injuries on her save a slight lump on the side of her head that trickled a thin thread of blood through her hair. 

"She's all right," Bannot said with relief. She was coming around even as he spoke, and when her eyes flickered open they settled on the Janovian with a hint of emotion that would never have touched the features of the tough sergeant Luthen had always known. 

Alzen barked an exclamation of triumph, and Luthen turned to see him leaning over the emergency speaker system with tools scattered around him. The small light of the control bank's internal power-source was flickering into life. 

Alzen's hands flew over the controls and they lit up obligingly. "Attention," he said, and his voice was picked up and bounced around the ship. Its echoes could be heard reverberating back to them along the dark and damaged corridors outside. "This is Captain Alzen speaking. We have taken heavy damage. All personnel are ordered to abandon ship immediately. This is an order. Abandon ship. Proceed to escape capsules with speed and caution." He repeated it a few times before wearily switching the machine off. 

"You've done what you can," the Doctor said, in an awkward attempt at comfort, too much pain in his voice to really be effective. 

"I know." As Alzen replied another shudder jolted the ship back onto something resembling its normal angle. The footing became much easier, but nobody was relieved. 

"That was an explosion!" Nyssa exclaimed. 

"Yes," said Alzen. "I think the main drive was hit. Almost all systems are hooked up to it. Emergency life-support and gravity are on separate circuits, not that that's going to matter in the slightest. If the main drive's suffered damage, it's unstable. We're probably already losing atmosphere faster than the systems can compensate. This ship is going to break up piece by piece. Just be glad we're nowhere near the drive systems. Anyone there is already dead." 

Luthen stood clumsily and helped Bannot to his feet. Between them, they lifted sergeant Dunae. She leaned heavily on Bannot as they joined the Doctor and the others. Two of the techs were with their group, Alzen was checking the pulse of another who lay motionless in his chair. "He's alive. You two, get him to an escape capsule between you, then do the same for yourselves." The techs manoeuvred their unconscious colleague off the command deck. 

"Will you be all right?" Alzen asked, leaning over the Doctor. Nyssa and Tegan were still at work on the emergency aid, although Nyssa seemed distracted, constantly looking up and around, worry straining her face. They'd stemmed most of the flow, but a large amount of the Doctor's blood already coated the floor. "We have to get to escape capsules ourselves as soon as you're ready to move, Doctor." 

"My TARDIS-" the Doctor began. 

Nyssa cut him off. "Captain Alzen, are you saying this ship is going to blow up?" 

"That would seem to sum up the situation," the Karalian responded snappishly. 

Nyssa looked blank for a moment, then exploded into motion. "Bannot, take over!" she shouted to the bemused Janovian, her voice almost a wail, as she abandoned her attentions to the Doctor's injury. She snatched Luthen's flashlight from his hands as she pushed past. "I have to get the cure!" With a scared glance back to the Doctor, she disappeared out of the door. 

"What? We've _got_ the cure," Alzen began, calling after her, "it's been broadcast-" 

"Nyssa!" Tegan moved to let Bannot take over with the Doctor's wrist, then bounded after her. "I'll fetch her, Doctor!" she yelled back. 

The Doctor broke from Bannot's benevolent grip, as though by reflex moving to follow, but the motion drew another violent splash of blood from his veins and he stilled with a gasp. As Bannot and Dunae tried frantically to stem the flow, Alzen snapped, "You. Luthen. Go after them. Get them into escape capsules, with force if necessary. This ship doesn't have long left." 

"Yes, sir!" Luthen had, anyway, been about to do so. He didn't think the women knew where the escape capsules were, nor how to use them. 

If they were separated from the Karalian crewmembers, they'd die with the _Vardito_. 

* * *

When Kweril looked up to find her standing in the doorway, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. His hands fell away from the weapon, revenge forgotten, and he cried out hoarsely, "I saw you die! I killed you! You can't be here." 

"I came back to get you, didn't I!" she yelled. There was a petulant note to her aggressive voice and stance which he hadn't expected from a vengeful spirit. Still, he could see the wall and mechanisms of his ship through her insubstantial form, there was no doubt she was a demon of some kind. He recalled how she disappeared after he'd killed her. 

Mirosan culture had been deeply steeped in superstition and ritual and Kweril, despite his outlaw status, was not unique from his people in this respect. On his hands and knees, he scrabbled fearfully for his sidearm amongst the machine parts strewn over the floor as the demon walked towards him, feet passing through the debris of tools and parts. 

A surprised-looking First Councillor Verani standing beyond the demon moved as though to stop him, but too late. His hands touched the handle of the gun and he snatched it up and levelled it in quavering hands. Eyes flinching shut, he fired the weapon at almost point-blank range. 

There was the sound of exploding machinery and of the dead woman's laughter. 

He opened his eyes. She was still standing there, her arms spread out mockingly. There wasn't a mark on her, but behind her the ship's air-recycling system was smouldering and ruined. Her laughter held a desperate edge of... relief? Her outstretched hands shook almost as much as his own, gripping the gun. He wondered why a demon should fear. 

Verani hung back as though she wasn't sure whether to intervene or not. Or perhaps for whom. 

"You missed me!" the dead woman yelled, hopping across a large cable, landing crouched-down in front of the energy weapon. "Missed!" she taunted, voice quavering. "How about another try? Maybe you'll get lucky and kill me again!" 

* * *

Tegan cursed as she tripped over another fallen object in the dark corridor. A sharp edge skinned her ankles. Why couldn't she have had the foresight to bring one of those fancy space age flashlights, instead of just running off like that? But then, amid the increasing feedback from the other projection playing behind her eyes like a bad case of double-vision, her concentration was not at its best. 

A bobbing light, steadily growing further away through the darkness in front, marked Nyssa's location. She was running, and the crashes floating back to Tegan, echoing strangely in the dead hulk of the ship, indicated her lack of care. Tegan hoped her friend wouldn't fall and injure herself. What could have got Nyssa so panicked? 

The light blinked out as Nyssa turned some invisible corner up ahead, leaving Tegan in darkness with no marker to guide her. 

"Rabbits!" Knowing it was nobody's fault but her own made her all the more angry. She stumbled a few steps and bumped into another obstruction, flung out both arms to save her balance and encountered the unseen wall to her left. "Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits!" she snapped, smacking her fist against the wall. She could go diffuse to run after Nyssa, but knowing her luck she'd end up running right through the ship's hull and be left floating helplessly in space. Whether that would kill her current body was anyone's guess. Would vacuum hurt, if her form didn't have much mass to start with? Did she need to breathe air? 

"Jovanka!" 

Jolted out of her frustrated pondering, she squinted back down the corridor. A faint light, hardly more than a glow, materialised gradually into a bulky figure limping with awkward speed towards her. Ryn Luthen, flashlight in hand, looked every bit a clunky cybernetic angel to her at that moment. 

"Thank goodness," she said, gripping his arm with relief as the featureless corridor was mapped out in torchlight before her eyes. "You're a lifesaver. Come on, we've got to catch up with Nyssa. Do you have any idea where she might be heading?" 

"I think she's going to the scientific facilities. This way." He led along the corridor, negotiating loose wall panels and the other debris littering the floor. 

Passing through the corridors approaching the labs, they heard Nyssa before they saw her, and the noises of equipment being rooted through and thrown aside led to a door open onto a small laboratory. 

Luthen flicked the flashlight around the interior to reveal a twisted mess of shattered equipment. Scientific phials and tubes, medical machinery and tools, storage units and shattered pieces from the ship's superstructure all combined into a jagged, treacherous sea across the floor. 

"Nyssa!" Tegan exclaimed. Her friend looked up in harassed surprise, then sighted something that turned her head sharply away. Something she lunged towards and swept up with a cry of triumph. 

As she snatched it, the ship shifted again. Caught overextended and off-balance, Nyssa crashed forward with a small cry, curling protectively around the object she held as she hit the debris in a splintering clatter of metal and glass. 

Tegan and Luthen were thrown against the door frame and each other by the turbulence. She clutched at himfor balance, and he clutched at the wall, until the shudders stopped. Gasping from receiving a metal elbow sharply under her ribs, Tegan disengaged from Luthen and picked her way across the lab, receiving an ominous lack of response from Nyssa's curled up form as she yelled her friend's name. 

Nyssa's flashlight lay in a pile of broken glass and noxious yellow liquid. Tegan retrieved it gingerly and knelt down. Luthen joined her an instant later and together they cleared a Nyssa-sized space in the broken glass on the floor and carefully rolled the Trakenite over into it. 

"Oh, no." There was a long cut across Nyssa's forehead, extending up into her hairline. Beyond that, any attempts at examination stopped because the flashlights weren't bright enough to reveal what damage lay beneath her hair. What was visible looked nasty enough. She wouldn't be waking up any time soon - though Tegan tried anyway, shaking her and calling her name. 

The object she'd been so desperate to save was clutched in her hands. Tegan pried apart her fingers' vice-like grip with difficulty and hefted, puzzled, a container of some kind. Tubular, metal, about a foot long. No seam anywhere on it, and no way to open it so far as she could see. 

"What do you think this is?" 

"She said she was coming back for the cure," Luthen said. "But it's already been broadcast. We don't need a sample to make more." 

Tegan considered the container and Nyssa's still form. "Whatever it is, we have to get her out of here." She looked to the Karalian for ideas. 

"We'll get her to an escape capsule." He tried to gather up the limp body and cursed his lack of success. "You'll have to help me lift her." 

They managed to get Nyssa's small form balanced reasonably securely in Luthen's arms. "What's up with your hand, anyway?" Tegan asked. 

"Kweril." 

Tegan scowled and added another score to settle with lizard-man. She picked up the flashlights and Nyssa's container, and turned her concentration to keeping her hands solid enough to carry them. 

She shone both flashlights before them to light their way through the dying ship. They stumbled at the tremors it gave in its death throes and flinched at the groaning, tearing sounds of stressed metal that seemed to emanate from all around them. For all the damage, she saw no living debris, no corpses. Blood, here and there, on the floor. 

"Here," Luthen said finally. He set Nyssa down and turned his attention to a circular hatch in the wall. Tegan had seen a number of these hatches lining the walls of the last few corridors, and they stretched along the left side of this one as far as she could see in the dim light. This hatch's controls were lit up while all the others she could see were dark and inactive, with only space visible beyond their portals. 

"Escape capsule?" Tegan hazarded, peering through into the cramped little pod. 

"Almost everyone on this level must have got out," Luthen said. "Which is good, but not for us - or the Captain and the others." 

"They'll be all right. The Doctor will take them in the TARDIS. Put Nyssa in this one. We'll have to return to the others and hope they've not left already." Not that she was in any danger. She felt illogically guiltily that Nyssa's and Luthen's lives were at risk here while she was safe - well, relatively - in the temporal device. 

Luthen fiddled with the controls and the hatch he was working on opened onto another door. He pushed another control. Nothing happened. Cursing, he punched the control pad, which remained stubbornly unresponsive, then reached in to manually force open the capsule's lid. Inside was a padded space large enough for a person, maybe two at a squeeze. At the far end there was small bank of controls. 

Luthen manoeuvred Nyssa into the escape capsule and wrapped her limp arm around the metal container. Despite her unconscious state, she seemed to curl up tighter around it. "Now you," he said, turning to Tegan. 

"What?" She stared into the cramped capsule, then back at the Karalian. "I'm coming with you. I can't die like this, remember, not for real. I can help you." 

"She needs your help more. The door's jamming. It'll need to be manually operated, or she could suffocate after landing if the internal air supply runs out before she wakes up." 

"So that's why this one's left- No. _No._ You go. I'm not leaving you to die here." 

"Do I look like I'll fit in there with her? There isn't any other option. You'll have to do it." 

"But I don't know how this thing works!" she yelled. 

"It's all right," he assured her quickly. "The capsule will automatically home in on Janovay as the nearest suitable planet and land there. You may only need to open the hatch upon landing." 

"I'd be having words with your supplier," Tegan grumbled. "All right, what do I do if anything else goes wrong?" 

He explained the controls and, she shakily climbed into the escape capsule next to - well, practically on top of - Nyssa. Feeling claustrophobic already, she craned her head to look back at Luthen, all too aware of how slim his own chances of escape were. He'd given Nyssa the only operational capsule they'd come across. He'd have to find another or make it back to the TARDIS before it left. 

"Good luck," she said, inadequately. 

"And you." He closed the lid from the outside and his incongruously youthful face disappeared from view. The interior hatch clicked shut. 

"Goodbye," she murmured. She might have imagined the sound of his footsteps receding away down the corridor. 

She turned her concentration to the capsule as the release operated, taking them away from the dying _Vardito_. Nyssa's life was in her hands, and Luthen might have sacrificed his, and she couldn't, _couldn't_ allow herself to fail. 

* * *

Kweril started to level his gun, then hesitated. He shook his head, and hissed through his teeth. "I don't know what you are... but you won't trick me. If you don't have any substance, spirit, you don't have any power to stop me either." 

From the relief mixed with Jovanka's despair, Verani realised she hadn't been so confident of her ability to control her form's solidity. The energy beam could still have damaged her, as it had before. 

"First Councillor Verani. My friend," Kweril said mockingly, dragging his eyes across to hers. "What are you doing here with this creature? Surely you do not come to prevent me destroying the Karalians? Is it not, after all, what we both desired?" 

"It was," she told him regretfully. "Until I learned what you tried to keep from me. The Syndrome. The reality of our enemy. Each of those ships, I am told, contains over a thousand lives. People. Children; their years measured in fractions of my own. Kweril, this is wrong." 

"And unnecessary," Jovanka said. "You're only ruining everything, Kweril! The Karalians were going to leave Janovay alone. They've found their cure and they don't have to fight any more. Or they didn't until you started throwing your weight around. Nobody needed to die. We could have had a clean solution!" 

"If what she says is true," Verani said, "You may have destroyed Janovay by your actions. A Karalian reprisal-" 

"Maybe that's how it always happened," Jovanka murmured. 

"Then we must destroy them all quickly before they have chance to respond!" Kweril cried. "You risk all our lives by delaying me!" He lunged towards the energy weapon, but Jovanka was still standing in front of it and the idea of pushing through her ghostly figure stopped him short. She folded her arms and determinedly stayed between him and the weapon. 

"No, Kweril! There's still a chance yet. Captain Alzen and Nyssa may have persuaded the fleet not to return fire. If you stop now they might not retaliate. But if you start firing that thing again, nothing can save us!" 

"You don't understand," Kweril hissed. "I will tolerate no peace, no treaties, no negotiations with the monsters that destroyed my race. The only possible option is to destroy them! They've taken you in, but you must open your eyes and see them for what they are. Killers! Children, yes, but trained from infancy to kill. To spread the infection in their selfish quest. To battle those who would resist their contamination..." 

He dived towards the weapon, to barge through Jovanka's transparent form despite his fear. But he rammed instead into a solid body and they fell in a tangle of flailing limbs. Her fists pounded inexpertly at his head and neck. Though his strength would normally have made a mockery of hers, these were not normal circumstances. Raking claws and damaging punches kept failing to connect, passing through Jovanka's form to ram against machinery or floor or walls. 

Those that did connect drew shrieks and blood. Jovanka clawed at Kweril's eyes with her fingers, closing her own in revulsion. 

Verani stood rooted to the floor by horror and indecision, her gaze shifting between the weapon and the combatants. 

* * *

It was clear from Alzen's concern that the group in the control room had been seriously delayed by the necessity of dealing with the Doctor's injury. The instant Bannot finished tying the bandage, the Karalian Captain was on his feet, hurrying them. "We have to go. I don't know that there'll be any escape capsules left on this level by now." 

The Doctor stood up briskly, fighting off dizziness and the irritance of his throbbing wrist. "There's no need to waste time looking for escape capsules. I know precisely where my TARDIS is on level two. It can carry us all back to Janovay much more safely." 

Alzen, a consummate leader, nodded in swift decision, casting his earlier scepticism aside. He handed more flashlights around. "We'll head for the main elevator shaft. There are emergency and maintenance ladders we should be able to use." He shot a raised eyebrow at the Doctor. "From what I've heard, this TARDIS of yours should be interesting to see." His face set as he cast his gaze assessingly around the rest of the group. "Come along sharply now, people." 

He ducked out of the door. Dunae swung the medical kit over her shoulder by its carrying strap and followed. 

"Onward, then," the Doctor said to Councillor Bannot, expansively waving the arm which didn't feel like it was being amputated below the elbow. Bannot's returning grin was quite un-Janovian. 

The Doctor hesitated in the Councillor's wake, looking around the dead heart of the ruined ship. He was reluctant to leave without knowing Nyssa, Tegan and Luthen were safe. What if, finding no capsules spare for their escape, they returned to an empty command deck? He sighed and followed Bannot. He had to accept there was nothing he could do. Luthen would see them all right. Chances were, they'd already got out as Alzen had instructed. He could not afford to worry, now there were other lives on his hands. 

Weak from blood loss and with the Zayol poisoning increasingly difficult to ignore, his senses spinning under the dual assault upon his concentration, it would be a demanding enough task to get Alzen and the others to the TARDIS and transport them all to safety. 

He caught up with Bannot. Regeneration could have a significant effect on an individual's personality traits, as he well knew, but all the same it was hard to believe this was Verani's impassive lieutenant, who had formerly betrayed about as much emotion and compassion as a robot. Every line of the Janovian's new body exuded interest and quirky enthusiasm. Bannot had been the most Janovian of his people, and now he didn't even seem like one of them. The grey Karalian uniform made of him a curious mixture of the two worlds. 

The corridors echoed with tortured metallic groans as the ship was torn apart by the stresses of explosions deep within the drive section. They were getting closer to that section, now. The debris-strewn floors were rocked by the motion of the dying ship and, in some places, walls were crushed and folded inward like paper. 

Alzen was becoming more frantic, urging them on faster, but the Doctor was too engaged in fighting his own pain to spare Alzen's concerns additional attention. He had his work cut out retaining his grip on consciousness and keeping moving, and was already exerting all the effort he was capable of. 

The Captain stopped suddenly, holding up a hand to signal silence, a frown of concentration on his face. In the stillness, human sounds became audible somewhere in front of them. "Somebody's had the same idea as us. The main lift shaft is up ahead." 

"We'd better catch up to them," the Doctor said, a little breathlessly. 

They turned a corner and found themselves in a large circular bay - the _Vardito's_ main elevator complex. 

A shadowy figure was trying to force one of the shaft doors. The Doctor swung his torch up and the figure turned around, raising a metal arm to shield his eyes. 

"Who's that?" asked a shaking, youthful voice. 

Ryn Luthen. 

"You've some luck, boy," Alzen said. 

"Captain Alzen," the Karalian youth said, his voice weighted with recognition and relief. "Doctor. Am I glad you're here. I was beginning to think I wasn't going to get out of this ship alive." 

Looking at the heavy double doors, it was immediately clear to the Doctor that it was going to take at least one functioning pair of hands to force them open. Luthen must have been close to despair, struggling alone in the dark. The youth grinned sheepishly, shaky with the aftermath of fear as he stepped back to let Dunae and Alzen take over his efforts. 

The Doctor's guilt at being the cause of their delay evaporated. Luthen might very likely owe his life to that delay. 

"I ran here," the Karalian said. "I was afraid you'd already gone. I thought I was alone." While Dunae and the Captain forced open the doors, he related what had happened to Tegan and Nyssa, and the Doctor's immediate worries for their safety abated. 

"It was very noble of you to see Nyssa safe," he told the young man, who had come within a hair's breadth of sacrificing himself. 

Dunae's raw cry of effort drew their attention back to the lift, where she stretched her stocky form to hold the double doors apart while Alzen wedged debris to keep them that way. 

The Doctor peered down the shaft curiously, swinging the torch beam around the interior. The distance below swallowed up the light. Within the few metres of its range, he could make out the maintenance ladder, in a niche clear of the path travelled by the elevators. A brusque hand snatched the back of his cricketing jersey to pull him away from the edge and Alzen pushed by, clipping a flashlight to the back of his belt, to swing out into the dark void. He disappeared from sight, only the wildly veering beam of light marking his location. 

"-to follow." His voice floated back up indistinctly. "-quick about it, now." 

The Doctor nudged Luthen after him, helping the Karalian awkwardly transfer his body across to the ladder, crooking his flashlight under his chin to illuminate the topmost rungs as he aided the youth. Once he had hold of the ladder, Luthen climbed down without much difficulty, hooking his metal elbow around every other rung in place of his broken hand. The Doctor backed out and politely waved for Bannot and Dunae to proceed before him. Then he too swung out into the darkness. 

Pain flared in his wrist as he wrapped both hands around a rung and scrabbled for a foothold. He climbed grimly after the others, shutting the pain away in a corner of his mind as new blood soaked through the dressing on his wrist. His right hand would take little weight and the blood loss made his balance unsteady. The ever more turbulent motions of the ship didn't help. 

They'd come up four levels from where he'd left the TARDIS. Not so very far to climb. And there, he was already passing a door, leading onto another level of the _Vardito_. Must be a quarter of the way down already- 

Alzen, some distance below, must have reached the door onto level two; he could be heard grunting with effort as he bashed at something which rang dully. The Doctor kept climbing, so focused that he narrowly missed stepping on Bannot's hands. The group had stopped, waiting for Alzen to open the doors. Bannot caught his foot and guided it to the rung. 

Alzen succeeded in forcing the doors apart, at least by several inches, at which point they jammed. The small-built Captain slid through the gap and helped the others follow with much less ease. The Doctor was immensely grateful when his feet touched ground again. 

The atmosphere they emerged into was smoky, its oxygen content thin. The Doctor could also detect traces of some rather toxic gases amongst the fumes. 

Alzen spat curses and racking coughs "Oxygen lost to... space and fire. I hope it isn't far to your TARDIS." 

The Doctor was rather afraid that it would prove further than the three Karalians with their human-like respiratory systems could reach. But he said, "It's this way," and took the lead, trying to overcome his own increasing weakness. He indicated to Bannot to proceed at the rear of the group, to make sure they didn't lose anyone. Bannot, like himself, could survive longer than the others in the noxious atmosphere, but only he could operate the TARDIS to get them all clear. 

Ryn Luthen, already badly weakened by the wear of the last few days, succumbed before they'd gone more than a few hundred metres. The Doctor turned at the metallic clamour of the Karalian's fall, but Bannot was already hauling him up with the same deceptive strength Verani had displayed, lifting the cyborg without difficulty. The Doctor didn't hesitate more than a second. Speed was crucial now. 

Dunae, with her head injury, followed some minutes later. Alzen caught her under the arms and, despite his own painful, gasping breaths, started to drag her along. 

The Doctor was having difficulty breathing himself when they reached the TARDIS, but felt energy return to him at the sight of the police box. He dug the key from his pocket. Fumbled at the lock. A decisive click beneath his unsteady fingers and the door creaked open. He waved Bannot, struggling now with Luthen's unconscious weight, over the threshold into the clear air of the TARDIS interior, and lurched back out. 

After his tremendous effort, Alzen had finally collapsed over Dunae a few metres away from the TARDIS. The Doctor reeled across to him, feeling the ship's tremors increasing in force through the reverberations of the floor. The _Vardito's_ break-up couldn't be long coming now. He dragged Alzen into the console room, and Bannot staggered past him to retrieve the sergeant. 

With everyone safely inside, the Doctor fell across the control console. He swiped a wildly shuddering hand at the door lever and punched controls almost randomly in his exhausted desperation. He could taste blood in his mouth. Blood from his slashed wrist, forgotten in the desperate struggle to the TARDIS, painted a track across the console. He slammed a fist down on the last of the controls. 

The rotor began to rise and fall as the sounds of dematerialisation filled the TARDIS. 

* * *

**Chapter 15**

Acceleration crushed her against the padded sides of the escape capsule, Janovay's gravity drawing them into the atmosphere, initiating a blind plunge towards the planet's surface. Unable to see where they were headed, unable to control their course, Tegan felt helpless and futile, and resented it. 

Nyssa, still unconscious, moaned softly at her side, and gritting her teeth as atmospheric turbulence gave the capsule an enthusiastic shaking, she thought that Nyssa was the lucky one, to be sleeping through their descent. 

She felt horrible about leaving Luthen and the Doctor and the others behind on the ship. She prided herself on staying by her friends whatever the danger, though the Doctor in that patronising way of his often tried to leave her in safety. 

She'd never had the chance to tell the Doctor- 

Something exploded inside the capsule's small control bank, snapping her from her thoughts. A cascade of sparks sprayed out from the computer. The capsule bucked and shuddered violently with the turbulence. 

Nyssa's face was inches from the splay of electrical fire. She flinched in her sleep and cried out as a spark painted a red line across her cheek. Tegan had little time to think. There was no room to move Nyssa out of the way, and a fire inside the capsule would kill her for sure. Tegan lunged clumsily across the coffin-like space to place herself between her friend and the spluttering, fizzing controls, willing herself as solid as possible as she smothered the fire by pressing her back and shoulders against the burning electrics. 

She screamed as the pain hit her. As she'd discovered when Kweril shot her, the copies created by the temporal device could be hurt and killed, in a solid state behaving much like her own flesh. She didn't want to think about what was happening to her back; couldn't think about anything else. 

Agony. 

_Overwhelming._

She could let go of the projection... 

_Nyssa would die._

She wasn't going to let go. 

Tegan braced her arms against the capsule's sides and clung desperately to consciousness and solidity, fighting to retain her position as a buffer between Nyssa and the burning controls. 

There was a jolt so severe it could only mean they'd hit ground, then the space they were in somersaulted over, flinging its two occupants this way and that, shaking loose Tegan's hold. And again, over. Again. All was reduced to confusion and dizziness. She lost track of which way was up. 

They stilled, but it felt like they were still turning over. She couldn't feel a surface underneath her. Gravity seemed to be pulling heavy on all sides. The capsule was filling up with smoke and sparks and she was losing her grip, fading out- 

-in the background, Nyssa, choking on smoke, unconsciously dying- 

"_No_!" 

With a desperate pain-filled effort, Tegan wrenched back to herself, and lunged for the lever to manually force the hatch. 

* * *

Verani had stood statue-like throughout the brutal struggle. For all that she had recently done and attempted to do, she remained Janovian, violence abhorrent to her. The sight of it froze her limbs and stopped her breath. 

One of the combatants had been her friend, the other tried to prevent a massacre. She felt for both; her revulsion would allow her to help neither. 

Jovanka's not-quite-material state prolonged the fight. Every time either she or Kweril was prevailing, the human's form would fluctuate, accidentally or by purpose, and whatever advantage gained would be lost. 

It seemed Jovanka had the advantage when she flinched suddenly, her form rippling dizzily between states of solidity. A scream like nothing Verani had heard before, drawn out by unspeakable agony, ripped the fabric of the air. 

_Some sort of feedback,_ supplied the part of Verani's mind which knew such things. _Something's happened to the other projection._

The human had rolled up into a foetal curl, arms hugged around her knees, whimpering incoherently. Whatever had happened, she was not in any state to finish dealing with Kweril. 

The Mirosan had initially backed away in fear. Now, he edged forward and swiped at her hunched figure. His claws passed through her and his mouth twisted into something between a grin and a grimace. He turned his back on Jovanka, cast a dismissive glance at Verani, and returned his attention to the weapon. 

Was he counting on their past agreements to protect him from action on her part, or could he simply not imagine her capable of acting to stop him? 

"Kweril," she said, softly, as his hand wavered over the control. 

One single button, pressed, would eradicate Karalian lives. He looked up at her; her friend Kweril of Miros II, his eyes no longer sane but twisted by vengeance. 

Prepared to sacrifice her world in the name of that vengeance. 

"Would you try to stop me now, Verani? You can't bluff me. I know you, and your people. You've done indirect violence, poison and plotting. But you're still Janovian. I know there's no action your conscience will allow you to take to stop me." 

Verani looked over to Jovanka's huddled figure. Her eyes were blank and her form still, as though the projection had been abandoned and yet remained, no life or consciousness in it. There would be no help forthcoming from the human. She was alone. 

There was nothing she could do, alone. 

"You see," Kweril hissed triumphantly. 

"No. It is you who fails to see. This is what we have planned for, my ally." She stretched her face into a smile. "We shall destroy the invaders together, Kweril. 

"I only want to press the button." 

Kweril laughed with relief and pleasure. 

It was as though a door had opened inside Verani's mind. The knowledge poured in, all the information which had been stored in her bloodline's biodata to be referenced by her subconscious becoming bright and clear to her. This was not the purpose for which her bloodline had been intended, but perhaps the purpose for which it had always been fated. 

About to die, she felt more alive and aware than ever before. Her brain, accepting finality, dismantled its barriers and became, transiently, complete in everything her programming made it possible for her to be. 

Kweril stepped back from the machine and indicated with an expansive gesture the control that would destroy lives and ships. "All you have to do is press that," he said, unaware that she no longer required such explanations. Her people had been/would be one of the universe's most advanced races, and they'd planted all their knowledge within her, the guardian and gaoler of their descendents. 

In the corner, Jovanka had lifted her head up and her eyes were no longer empty, although they bore only the barest spark of comprehension amid the pain. Not enough to make a difference, and Verani's mind was already irrevocably set. 

She stepped up to the weapon. Looked down at the controls, understanding blazing a path through her brain as she recognised their purpose and their workings down to the individual components. Reached out a hand to touch, as much in awe as necessity. 

She knew what she had to do. 

Her fingers trailed across the controls, programming destruction. Kweril lunged forward with a cry, already too late. 

"I'm sorry," said Verani, in the instant before the weapon's overload reduced the ship and its content to ashes. 

* * *

"Are you all right, Doctor?" A rasping voice drew him back to the world of the living. He raised his head from the TARDIS console. 

"Ah, Captain Alzen," he said, straightening up and taking in the scene in the console room, pleased to see the Karalian on his feet and blinking around the TARDIS' spacious interior with an expression suggesting he was determined not to ask. "You must have a remarkable constitution." 

Bannot knelt beside Luthen and Dunae, who looked pale and young in their unconscious state. Alzen was a little unsteady but powered by determined self-discipline. He'd be more reliable for assistance than Bannot, who knew nothing about technology. 

"You don't look so good," Alzen persisted. "You should rest-" 

"That won't help. Ironically enough, time is precisely what I don't have." The Doctor flicked at dials and controls on the console. "According to the readings, the other damaged ship came down some miles away. I want to know what the _Vardito_ is doing. Press that blue button over there, will you? - Yes, that's the one." 

The TARDIS' exterior viewer flickered into life, bringing up a display of the hulk of the _Vardito_ drifting in space, trails of debris fragments spiralling out from it toward Janovay. The ship, bereft of power and guidance, was slowly but surely being dragged in towards the planet. The Doctor forced his distracted brain through some quick calculations, his shaking fingers jabbing the controls in time with his thoughts. A pixellated model of the ship's likely trajectory through the atmosphere appeared on the console's small display screen. 

The Doctor stepped back, waving for Alzen to take a look. 

"My God," the Captain breathed. "It's going to flatten the city. Can't we do anything? What armaments do you have on this craft of yours? A strong blast of energy fire might be enough to alter its course-" 

"No, no... the TARDIS has no weapons, Captain. There isn't anything we can do to prevent it. Far from it, in fact - we _mustn't_ prevent it. The Janovians were fated to die. It seems nothing that's happened here has changed that, after all." Breathing was difficult. He wasn't sure if it was the poison or the bloodloss. Maybe the Karalians' Syndrome. Maybe something else. 

"But Doctor, the entire population of this planet is concentrated in that city." Alzen hesitated, his eyes finding the single exception. 

Bannot smiled wistfully and shrugged and turned away. The news of his people's imminent destruction was no new or unexpected shock. 

The Doctor thought about Nyssa, last survivor of her world, and wondered if Bannot wished himself back among that doomed population. Nyssa had suggested more than once that perhaps she should have died with Traken. 

"We must be able to do something," Alzen said. "Can't we evacuate the city? How many people could fit in this 'TARDIS', Doctor?" 

But the Doctor shook his head. "No time. Look." 

The ship on the screen was descending in an enveloping cowl of flame. The Doctor reconfigured the display to follow the ship's path, and they watched breathlessly for the impact. 

Bannot straightened and looked on in silence, calmer than Alzen, whose metal and flesh hands were clenched into fists at his sides. 

On the small display screen, the crude representation of the ship hit a line diagram of the city and both disappeared in an explosion of white pixels. 

* * *

Ashes. She'd burned to ashes with Verani and Kweril, neither of whom would be waking up again. 

She might have wished _she_ wasn't, if not for the nagging tickling at the back of her mind, telling her there was something she needed to do. Life hurt too much right now. It proved little use to remind herself this body was only a projection, unreal. There wasn't any difference between fake pain and real pain. Everything felt real, and wasn't that what mattered when you were face down in the dirt, breathing burnt flesh on the air and recognising it as your own. 

Tegan clung to the projection. So tempting to relax her grip, let it slip away, return to the device. But there was something - something she had to do- 

Before she could catch the thought, a sound distracted her. Muted at first, but gathering volume. Getting closer. It sounded like an aeroplane - but not quite. Fear wrenched her head up from Janovay's blue-green not-grass. 

She registered that Nyssa lay nearby, and that chance or some homing-in function of the capsule's systems had brought them down close to the city, but the growing speck in the sky was what monopolised her attention. 

A ship. No, the carcass of one. She could see its halo of flame as it drew nearer. The _Vardito_ had become a blackened wreck in the midst of a fireball. 

In the time it took for her to realise that it was heading straight for her, and to think of how ironic it would be to have escaped one fiery death only to suffer another, it was already upon her, passing so close overhead that she reflexively ducked, pressing her body flat against the ground. 

She felt the rush of air displaced by its passing. The breath was seized from her throat and she gasped. A second later, she gulped breaths that were hot and stale. The heat upon her burned back almost made her pass out. 

Eyes watering, she blinked and raised her head, the tears drying fresh on her cheeks before they could fall, just in time to see the impact. 

* * *

The ship on the exterior viewer, buffeted by atmospheric turbulence, scraped the top of the watch-tower on its shallow angle of descent and hurtled onwards to crash into the hills behind the city in a ball of fiery destruction. 

"I don't believe it," said the Doctor. They should have been watching history unfold, but it seemed the world had changed. 

Alzen laughed with relief. "It looks like you got your sums wrong, Doctor." 

Offended, he shook his head and tapped at controls, recalculating swiftly. "My sums were _right_, Captain. I can't tell you why they're not dead. It was an incredibly lucky escape. Shouldn't have happened - random turbulence in the atmosphere - pure chance-" 

He punched the console decisively and they re-materialised on Janovay, returning to the co-ordinates where the TARDIS had stood the last few days. The image on the screen changed to the vista outside; a different-angled view of the untouched city and blackened crater in the mountains. 

The others seemed to be recovering. While Bannot helped Dunae to her feet, Luthen joined the Doctor in gaping at the screen. "The _Vardito_?" he asked hoarsely. 

"That's right." 

"Can you put me through to Admiral Kanos with your technology here?" Alzen asked, tearing his eyes away, voice suddenly crisp and urgent. "There's no guarantee they won't get tired of doing nothing and retaliate. I have to make sure that doesn't happen. As it is, I'm going to have some explaining to do for that order not to fire on the city." 

The Doctor knew he should refuse the request. Another danger to Janovay would be assuaged, another possibility to change history opened up. But he was too drained to weather another battle between his judgement and his conscience. He did as the Captain asked. 

* * *

She braced her arms against the ground and levered up onto her elbows, her heart still beating fast and erratic from the near-miss. Movement hurt, the pain assaulting her grasp on the projection, screening her vision with a haze of static. 

The _Vardito's_ impact crater made it look like something had taken a bite out of the mountain peak beyond the city. 

Not far from the city walls, she could see figures milling next to a bulky shape on the ground. Karalians. At least two ships had been destroyed, with crews running into the thousands. The Karalian capsules would be coming down all over this area of the planet. 

Nyssa lay a few yards further down the slope. Tegan remembered hauling them both from the capsule in a last effort before the destruction of the other projection blitzed her senses. Scrabbling painfully onto hands and knees, she crawled to Nyssa's side, trying not to think about her back. Telling herself that when she'd done what was needed, she'd let go of this projection, the Doctor would come haul her out of the temporal device, give her a severe lecturing, then she could be normal again. Maybe she wouldn't even remember what it felt like to have half her body burnt to meat. 

Or would they pull her out of the temporal device covered in scars, wounds from bullets and explosions and fire all over her body? Would they pull her out dead? 

_Don't think about it._

She thought of Verani, sacrificing herself to prevent mass destruction. Guiltily, she thought of how she'd disliked her. 

Nyssa was breathing. Apart from that tiny red burn across her cheekbone, she seemed to have suffered no damage but bruises. Tegan had managed to protect her from the worst. She'd be all right now. 

The Doctor... She looked around, and saw that the TARDIS had returned to where it had stood before, a blue apparition amidst the grasslands, several hundred yards distant. 

She wondered if she'd be able to make it so far. The whole of her back was a searing agony that ate at her resolve. 

_Don't think about itdon'thinkdon'tthinkdon'tthink_- 

She had to get to the TARDIS. She had to tell the Doctor... She had to tell him about Verani so that he could tell the Karalians. 

Her back hurt. 

_Don't_- 

She gathered her legs under her and began to stumble towards the police box. 

* * *

Admiral Kanos' features were distorted by the TARDIS screen and by anger, his large face and larger fury dominating the console room. "You endangered Karalian lives for the sake of hostile aliens? If you hadn't been the one to deliver the cure, I might wonder whose side you're fighting on, Alzen." 

"We don't have to fight on any side any more!" The Captain's body language was growing increasingly agitated. "We're not at war, and the Janovians are not hostiles. I have it from a reliable source that the weapon which was fired upon the fleet is operated by a single individual, a Mirosan, and that the Janovian people condemn his actions. We can't destroy a city of thousands to kill a single man!" 

"Karalians have died!" 

"Not because of the Janovians. You can hardly justify a retaliatory strike against one enemy and thousands of innocent bystanders. It's a long time since the last shot was fired - almost thirty minutes ago, now. Perhaps the Janovians have already dealt with the Mirosan." 

"And perhaps he's just taking his time to improve his aim. You don't know what's happening down there any more than we do, and we have no way to contact the city. _Karalians have died_. It is my responsibility to make sure there are no more casualties." 

"Sir, I can't believe you're seriously considering this!" 

Luthen was no more than a spectator to the debate. A mere soldier, he had no place to speak. He clenched his jaw in helpless anger, watching his people prepare to commit an act he had for a brief time allowed himself to believe them exonerated of, watching Admiral Kanos ready to eradicate Janovay's population in an act of prudence. 

The Doctor might have been more convincing than Alzen, had he attempted to reason with the Admiral, but he remained silent, saying no more than a few words of acknowledgement when introduced. Luthen suspected, with bitter disillusionment, that it wasn't all to do with his deteriorating condition. The Doctor was exercising his policy of non-interference. He didn't want the Janovians to die, and he wouldn't help to destroy them, but he wasn't going to act to save them. 

But Verani's poison was extracting a harsh toll and, his annoyance aside, Luthen feared for the Doctor, who seemed to remain on his feet by will alone. His skin was pale and every so often he reached up to wipe his mouth and brought his hand away smeared with blood. They had to get back to Verani. Were wasting time while Alzen and Kanos argued. 

If the Karalians destroyed the city, they would also destroy Verani's supply of the Zayol. Luthen felt cold. If the Doctor was willing to allow that, to die himself for what he believed necessary, what right had he to find fault? 

Bannot had been snared into the debate now, stepping up to the screen as Alzen said, "This is the member of the Janovian council I've been negotiating with." 

Bannot inclined his head. "He speaks the truth. My people are not hostile. They would not fire upon your fleet. There has recently been one among us, a Mirosan by the name of Kweril, whose desire for revenge upon your people might lead him to do so. If my people were aware of his activities, they would request that he desist." 

"_Request_?" Kanos said, incredulously. 

"We do not practise violence," Bannot explained, looking around the others. 

Janovians, Luthen thought, didn't practise lying either. 

"This is ridiculous." The Admiral's eyes scrutinised Bannot's form, taking in the uniform, the Syndrome scars on the alien's hands. 

So did everyone else. 

He looked just like any Karalian soldier. 

They were never going to get through to the Admiral. 

Faint sounds of something scratching on the TARDIS door interrupted them. The Doctor frowned at the closed door, tapped his fingers on the console in a brief jaunty rhythm of indecision, then flicked the door lever. 

Jovanka - Tegan - fell through into the TARDIS, landing on hands and knees. The whole room drew in a breath as her back and shoulders were exposed to view. 

"Oh, no." The Doctor, his own injuries apparently evaporating in his concern, swiftly knelt beside her, grasping her arms gently. "Tegan. What happened?" 

"Capsule malfunction..." she slurred. Luthen's eyes avoided contact with her back. She shouldn't have been moving around with such an injury. Sutely only her unreal status courtesy of the temporal device made it possible. 

"Where's Nyssa?" the Doctor asked. "Tegan. Tegan! Snap out of it! You must tell me where she is!" 

"Nyssa's alive... unconscious. Verani... Verani's dead, Doctor. All burnt up. Verani and Kweril and the weapon he used against the Karalians. There's no danger any more..." 

Alzen had been as taken aback by her appearance as the rest of them, deaf to the Admiral's furious demands that he relate what was going on. Now, the Captain sprang to Tegan's side, breaking the Doctor's grip to haul her to her feet. She swayed drunkenly. "I'm sorry," he said urgently. "But I need you. You must tell the Admiral what you just told us." 

Tegan nodded and with his support staggered up to the screen. 

"You have something to say?" Kanos asked gruffly. 

"She's a friend of Nyssa of Traken," Alzen said. "She has news from the Janovian city." 

Shaking off the Captain's hands to stand on her own, her voice rising to something approaching her usual volume and aggression, Tegan said, "The person who shot down your ships is dead! The weapon he used has been destroyed. The Janovian First Councillor sacrificed herself to stop him. You don't need to retaliate - Verani's already done it for you!" 

So Verani was dead, Luthen thought. The news cut. The Doctor and Bannot looked similarly grieved. All that power and vision, destroyed by Kweril's lust for revenge. She had treated him with compassion, when she knew his race had come to destroy her world. 

"This woman speaks the truth?" the Admiral asked. 

Alzen looked at the Doctor and Luthen. Luthen nodded his trust, the Doctor stood frozen. Alzen turned back to the screen. "Yes," he said. "I'll vouch for it." 

Kanos nodded slowly, and cast aside his reluctance. "You brought us the cure, Captain. Your word holds weight. I'll instruct the fleet to stand down weapons. Hopefully we can pick up the pieces and return to the celebrations begun before this incident." But he sounded unconvinced; reality had intruded the dream. "Continue organising relations with Janovay's authorities, and distribute the Syndrome cure among its people." 

The communication cut off to leave them staring at a blank screen, and Tegan slid gracelessly to the floor. Luthen was at her side in an instant. The Doctor, slowed by his injuries, knelt a moment after. 

She was almost completely transparent. He reached for her hand, but found he could not touch her. He tried to dampen his fear and concern; he'd seen her like this before and she'd come back. The Doctor, who knew the theory but hadn't seen it in practise, wrung his bloody hands. 

"It's all right," Tegan said. "I've done what I needed to. Can't hold onto this form. Hurts... I'll be all right. I was before. Just come and get me out of this damned machine!" 

"Tegan-" 

"I'm not dying!" she snapped. "I'm not. You come and get me out!" Her lips moved silently, her eyes becoming clearer suddenly. "Not dying... You're not dying either, Doctor. Nyssa came up with a substitute for Verani's poison. Once I got the hang of the temporal device, I went back to the original plan and did a swap. Still very toxic... but nothing you and Nyssa can't repair." 

Tegan's form faded away, leaving her last word hanging in the air. 

"Good grief," whispered the Doctor, his eyes lighting up in excited inspiration. "They changed what happened, without changing anything! They _cheated_. Not really cricket, but nonetheless. Desperate situations, as they say." A broad grin spread across his face, marred by a smudge of red at the corner of his mouth. 

"What are you talking about, Doctor?" Alzen snapped. "We have a problem. Didn't you hear what Kanos said about distributing the cure? Well, we haven't any. I can get the formula, but we'll have to get some mixed fast, else everyone in that city will be dead in hours anyway. With all the Karalian traffic to this planet, the contamination will already be in the air. We haven't had time to cure more than a small percentage of the personnel yet." 

There was a choked gasp from Dunae. "But Nyssa had to develop another cure for Bannot. His biochemistry was too different. He almost died." 

"Another cure?" Alzen stilled in shock. "Sergeant, only one formula was ever broadcast from the _Vardito_. The rest of Nyssa's work _burned with the ship_." 

"So the Janovians die as history dictates," the Doctor said softly, without the slightest hint of relief. 

* * *

Her head ached. Nyssa didn't want to move. But something ate at her mind. A worry. A responsibility... 

She forced her eyes open. Janovay's twin suns blinded them and forced them closed. She rolled onto her side, trying to shield her face. 

She lay on the coarse grass-like growth that dominated Janovay's landscape. How could that be, when last she remembered she had been in the ruined laboratory on the Karalian ship, searching frantically for- 

The cure! She sat up too fast and almost passed out again. Raising a hand to her head, she felt dried blood caking her temple and gumming her hair. She pulled the hand away quickly. 

She looked around, blinking in the sunlight. An escape capsule of crude design stood open and burned out further up the hillside. Panic hit her. Had the container been destroyed in the fire? 

She scrambled up the hill with little regard for her injury. 

There was nothing inside the capsule but ashes. 

It must have been Tegan and Luthen who put her inside. They wouldn't have known the value of the container to include it, how could they have? 

Nyssa stared around the hillside fearfully, and blinked as the sunlight glinted off an object some distance down the slope. 

She reached it at an unsteady run, and plucked it from the grass. 

Clutching it to her chest, she continued running toward the city. 

* * *

**Chapter 16**

It was two days later when Nyssa and the Doctor visited the small, solemn area of devastation where the explosion had taken out Kweril's ship, Kweril, and First Councillor Verani. The paved square was still blackened by ashes, the rubble still piled high in the centre. There had not yet been time for the Janovians to clear the wreckage and find what was left of the bodies to bury them. 

A few offerings lay on the ground, intricate carvings of wood and small wreaths woven with thick blue-green fronds. The Doctor seemed surprised by these, and stared at them for a long time, his expression full of childlike wonder and incomprehension, before finally he removed the celery from his lapel and lay it among them. 

Nyssa, who had nothing to give, stood silent, taking in the chaotic destruction of the blast zone, so out of place in the ordered city. 

They had spent the previous day recovering from the physical and emotional wear of the invasion which hadn't, finally, occurred. Nyssa, who had suffered the least damage, felt now only a dull headache, but she was concerned about Tegan and the Doctor. 

Tegan didn't appear to remember much about her time in the temporal device, which was probably for the best. She had been subjected to stresses the human mind probably shouldn't be able to cope with. The energy transfer from the destruction of the device's first projection, which had enabled her to make the leap to controlling the device herself, had hardly been stable. She might seem all right, but Nyssa was worried about possible hidden repercussions, which might not become clear for some time. 

Tegan had not wanted to re-visit the scene of Verani's demise. Understandable, considering she had experienced it intimately. She was in the TARDIS, recovering. Ryn Luthen was keeping her company. 

The Doctor had been morbid and brooding since he'd been healed. Nyssa knew he disapproved of the antics she and Tegan had engaged in - helping him, helping the Janovians and Karalians in the face of history's dictates. She was still wondering about the consequences herself, but nothing had happened yet, the timeline seemed stable. 

She wasn't sure why. 

The Karalian fleet had departed the previous day, leaving only Alzen and a handful of those under his command from the _Vardito_ to oversee relations on Janovay. The Bindosah Empire had declared war on the Karalian Union, taking advantage of the current unrest and the fact they no longer need fear the Syndrome. They wanted the store of technological knowledge gathered by the Karalians in their years of searching, Alzen explained gruffly. It didn't seem fair, that they should end their eternal warring only to begin a different kind of battle, this time not the besiegers but the besieged. Then again, perhaps it was a kind of justice. The Karalians, understandably, were not well liked in galactic circles. 

Nyssa sighed, wondering if there had been any point to her actions at all. Saviour of the Karalian Union. Given a choice, the Karalians' was not exactly the Union she would have chosen to save. 

"Poor Verani," the Doctor said, bringing her thoughts back to reality. "She died to save her people, after all." 

"She almost killed you." 

"Yes." He kicked at ashes, drawing patterns on the black-stained paving slabs with the toe of his shoe, not looking at her. "If you had known, beforehand, what was going to happen to Traken, what would you have done to prevent it? What lengths would you have gone to?" He sighed, and added quickly, "I'm sorry. Don't answer that. I know it isn't fair." 

"I understand, Doctor," Nyssa said. "I understand Kweril, too." 

He stared at her, eyes intense and unnerving, almost like his previous self's for a second. "Yes. I see," he said finally. 

They stood in silence for some time, until Nyssa asked, "Do you really think everything will be all right? With the timeline? With history? The Krians and the future. We changed the past, after all. The Karalians are still going to war, but won't they be different wars? And the Janovians aren't dead. What will it all mean?" 

The Doctor shook his head. "You shouldn't have meddled. I understand why you did, but although what you changed may appear for the better at the moment, we can't tell what future repercussions there will be. Look at the Karalians - they're still at war. In a sense, curing them made them vulnerable. Their strength was in their infection. The Janovians... the Janovians were supposed to die at this time. It was part of their safety when they escaped here. I don't know what will happen to them now. It's out of my hands, and out of their hands, the hands of the original colonists who set the boundaries. Verani's bloodline is destroyed, and with it their control. It was damaged anyway, but now... now they're set loose, free from the fetters of the past or the future. Who knows what they might become?" 

"You know what they are?" 

"Y-es." He frowned. "I shouldn't. I'm going to have to try very hard to forget." 

"You still haven't explained about the timeline. Why hasn't anything happened yet? You'd sense it, wouldn't you, if anything were wrong?" 

He shook his head. "All in good time. It's going to take a lot of hard work to put right what you and Tegan between you have managed to unravel." 

"Put right - you wouldn't-" For a moment, she was afraid he intended to go back and change things over again. 

"No, Nyssa. I wouldn't. It would probably only make things worse anyway. What I have in mind is quite different. Not an original idea, a variation on a theme. But it may do the job nonetheless. Wait and see." 

He fell silent, then, and would say nothing further on the issue. 

* * *

"Is there any more of this stuff?" Luthen asked, waving an empty can. 

"Sure." Tegan reached for the ice bucket on the grass next to her deck chair, plucked up another Fosters and threw it across to him. He caught it in his metal hand, grinning. 

They'd found the deck chairs in one of the TARDIS' many cluttered rooms, and the Fosters in a crate left over from Tegan's former travels with the Doctor before he'd left her behind at Heathrow. And since the Doctor, with Nyssa in tow, was still running around like a headless chicken as he had been for the last two days, organising people, they had decided to take advantage of their finds. After all, they were supposed to be convalescing. 

The suns blazed down from the intensely blue sky, painting the distant city gold and warming the lush hillside around the TARDIS with its glow. It was another beautiful day. 

Tegan snagged a second can for herself and popped it open. She was beginning to feel slightly tipsy, a sensation particularly welcome after the past few days. According to Nyssa, her mind shouldn't have been able to cope with the temporal device. She fully intended to abuse her mind further with copious quantities of alcohol, and try to wipe away the fragmented images and incomplete memories that grated against the edges of her thoughts. 

"You said this was a... 'ritual' on your world?" Luthen asked, with a degree of scepticism. The Karalians, she had discovered, did not abuse their systems with recreational drugs, because they felt they already had enough to cope with. Fair enough, she'd grumbled, but the Syndrome was gone now, so lighten up already. 

"Yep. This is what we do where I come from after we've scraped through stupidly dangerous and life-threatening events." She attacked the contents of the can with vigour. 

She hadn't quite told the Doctor and Nyssa the truth about her recollections of her time in the temporal device. She had snatches of vivid memory - images, sensations, voices, scenes, a jumble without context or coherence. A reptilian alien standing over her with a gun in his hand. A capsule blazing through the atmosphere on a collision course with the ground. A ship vanishing into flames and ashes. The Doctor's face as she fell through the doors into the TARDIS with half the flesh burned off her back. 

She remembered what it felt like to die. 

Others had explained to her the sequence of events, providing a context for her jigsaw memory. She remembered enough, raw, for a lifetime of bad dreams; too little for some core part of her psyche to ever fully accept she'd done those things for real. 

She also remembered Luthen - not in specific detail, but she hadn't needed any introduction, hadn't needed anyone to tell her he was a mate. 

They were the odd ones out here, the ones who hadn't a clue what was going on, who neither had nor wanted any part in the grand-scale events around them. Janovay's future was being organised and planned for. The Doctor had asked Luthen, on sick-leave from Alzen's command, to keep her company in the TARDIS, interfering as usual. 

The Karalian had found a pair of shorts and a loud Hawaiian shirt in the TARDIS' cluttered stores. It had been difficult to keep a straight face when he emerged wearing them. 

Tegan had reverted to her old clothes from Earth, and was enjoying the sunshine. 

"What will you do now, anyway?" she asked Luthen. "Now you're cured." 

"Whatever Alzen decides. Since the Bindosah declared war, it seems I'm still a soldier after all." 

She sighed. It must have been a blow, after all that had happened, to discover he still wasn't free. "You could come with us." 

He looked mildly unnerved. "I'm sorry, but, well, I get the feeling, from the way the Doctor talks, that this sort of thing happens to you people quite a lot. I think once was enough for me. Thanks, but it's that kind of strife I wanted to escape from." He stared up into the skies. 

"But at least you wouldn't have to fight, to kill." 

He nodded slowly. "I'll think about it." 

They were both dozing in their deck chairs by mid-afternoon when Nyssa and the Doctor strolled back up the hill, next to a bucketful of cans capsized in melted ice water. 

* * *

Late in the evening, the Doctor took her quietly aside and they strolled across the grasslands in the moonless Janovian night. Tegan, expecting a lecture about something or other, was not totally unprepared when he said, "You know we're leaving in the morning?" 

"Yes. Nyssa said." She thought it was about time, to be honest. Too much had happened on Janovay. She wanted to leave, and to be able to forget. 

"You seem to get along well with Luthen." He distractedly engaged in swiping at fireflies with his hat. 

"Yes," she said, waiting for him to make his point. 

"I wondered if you wouldn't rather stay," he admitted. "It would be all right, if that was what you wanted to do. We've already bent the laws of time so far out of shape that another little twist wouldn't do any harm." 

"What?" she squeaked in outrage, rounding on him. She felt like flooring him. "Are you trying to get rid of me? He's just a mate, for crying out loud! And I'm not staying here. Believe it or not, I intend to get back to Earth some day. I do have a life there, you know!" 

"All right!" the Doctor said, protecting his ears with his hands. "Calm down! I just wanted to be sure." He cautiously removed his hands as it became clear the decibel level was safe once more, and grinned mischievously. "I'm glad, actually. The TARDIS is far too quiet without you around." 

Before she could stop spluttering long enough to respond, he'd mockingly doffed his hat to her and retreated back toward the police box, beige coat billowing out behind him in the light breeze. 

* * *

The Janovian presence at their departure was restrained to the newly-reappointed First Councillor Crivthen and Ambassador Bannot. There was a more enthusiastic turnout on the part of the Karalians, who came in honour of Nyssa. Most of those left on Janovay had put in an appearance, but on Alzen's stern orders remained well back while those who'd been at the core of the action made their farewells. 

"I hope you'll come back to visit, Doctor," Alzen said. "It looks like my present posting may well become a long-term one, so I'll be here for a while." He didn't look too unhappy at being grounded, the Doctor noted. Most of the Karalians seemed to long for the quiet life, at heart. Although life on Janovay in the near future was not going to be so quiet as it had been. Even after everything that had happened and been prophesied, the Janovians had welcomed the battle- and disease-scarred soldiers, too amiable a people to do anything else. 

"I sincerely doubt that would be a good idea," he said apologetically. "Still, you never know." 

Alzen turned to Nyssa, his eyes misty. The Doctor had observed, these last few days, that Nyssa had become almost a deity to these people. It was both amusing and worrying. "We will always remember you and venerate your name," the Captain said solemnly, with a small, awkward bow. 

The Doctor certainly hoped they would do nothing of the sort. Nyssa spoiled Alzen's attempt at ceremony by snaring him in a hug that caused hushed mirth among the Karalian ranks. 

Nyssa hugged Bannot next, who looked perplexed. Dunae was standing beside him, as she had been for most of the last five days. Bannot had decided to travel with the next ship to the Karalian Union, to represent Janovian interests at the heart of their vast network of peoples and worlds. It didn't take much imagination to guess who he'd be requesting as his liaison. 

Crivthen and the Doctor soberly clasped hands. The old First Councillor had not welcomed the changes to his world with the same enthusiasm as his colleague. "We are a people divided now, as we never were before," he confided. "There are a number of us who would rather remain in solitude than become part of the Karalian Union. I do not know what will happen. But I do know that it is better than my people's total demise. I know you did not try to save us, Doctor. But I thank you for not preventing us from being saved. I know you could have done so, had you chosen." 

The Doctor nodded slowly, accepting this mixed tribute as what he probably deserved. 

Finally, the Doctor turned to Luthen, who had stood aside throughout this, alike Tegan who also stood aside, but elsewhere, with her arms folded defensively across her chest, looking irritable. "Good luck," he said to the Karalian. "All the best." 

Luthen nodded tightly, his eyes flickering to the TARDIS' open doors. 

"Come along, then," the Doctor said brightly, waving Nyssa and Tegan inside before him. Tegan ducked under his arm to yell back to Luthen, "See you, tin man!" 

The Karalian grinned and waved. And caught the door of the police box before it could swing closed, and slipped inside. 

* * *

**Epilogue (1)**

Wind chased the dust across the bleak surface of the world which had been Janovay. It caught up forgotten items of the research team's equipment and bowled them, clattering madly, across the dead ground. It found its way through the pores of Marea Drex's thermal suit and made her shiver involuntarily. 

The Doctor had finished his 'explanation'. Her thoughts were slowly returning to the present, and she was feeling the cold again as she hadn't done throughout his tale. 

She stared at him in wonder. He had related the strange catalogue of events with such vivid sincerity that not once had it occurred to her to disbelieve. 

"So you see," he finished gently. "Whatever you have found or might yet find here, the universe can't afford to hear it." He hesitated. "I can get you any evidence you need to report what has to be the 'official' version of events, so to speak - one of the advantages of time travel. All you'd have to do to ensure the stability of the timestream and guarantee those people survival is to write a paper. The universe need never know that the history of Janovay isn't real. You and I both know that it isn't the people involved in events that make history, but those who interpret and record it. I'm offering you the chance to change the world." 

Marea shook her head. "This is unbelievable. It's immoral. To falsify results... are you saying this is the only way?" 

"No, I'm not. But it is the only way which doesn't involve more chaos and bloodshed. One lie to save thousands of lives. I think you'll see how they balance, if you think about it." 

"They're already dead, those people," Marea said. "They've been dead for millennia." 

"Technically, yes... from a certain point of view. But the possibilities are alive. There might still be Janovians around somewhere today. There were Janovian hybrids in the Karalian Union, still, a thousand years after the events I've told you. And I don't know what happened to Crivthen's people; their colony could have relocated anywhere. 

"Look," he added with a hint of desperation. "It isn't really a lie. Somewhere, in some theoretical offshoot of our reality, it happened that way for real. And if you write it, it will be the truth as far as anyone who ever reads it is concerned. I know it isn't fair for me to ask you to choose between your professional integrity and peoples' lives-" 

"But I did choose, didn't I?" she said staring away from him across the dust. "Otherwise, you'd have felt the repercussions by now. Otherwise, you'd probably never have got here to tell me. The instability - you knew what choice I'd make." She looked finally back at him meeting his eyes. "Because, when all's said and done, I wrote your paper. I always did." 

* * *

**Epilogue (2)**

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS to discover with satisfaction that it was in exactly the arranged location. Tegan and Nyssa were standing at a refreshment stand a few yards away, buying the Krian equivalent of candy-floss. They waved as they spotted him. 

In the bustle of the bazaar, the freak shows and magical acts and the vast array of oddities and curios the traders were offering, the appearance of the TARDIS attracted no more than a few interested glances from people whose gaze was soon drawn to something else. 

Tegan and Nyssa, clutching sticks with fuzzy blue sugar creations on the ends, pushed their way through the crowds to meet him. 

Their activities since leaving Janovay had proven tedious and wearing. They had been involved in an inordinate amount of tinkering with archaeological and historical data at various stages of discovery, analysis and documenting. This had ranged from arguing with frustrated historians, to hacking into computer records, to breaking into archives to accidentally spill ink over or set fire to important historical documents, to sneaking into archaeological sites to plant false evidence during the night. But much of the work had involved intensive hours of research and analysis to identify sources that might give the game away. 

Which was why, for the most significant portion of these activities, the Doctor had agreed to leave Tegan, Nyssa and Luthen on Alucah with a generous supply of the local currency while he struck off alone to complete the process. 

Alucah was one of the shoddier planets of the Krian Empire, approximately concurrent with Marea Drex's era, give or take a decade or two. In its favour, however, it was a hive of tourism and a stopover for spacefaring races from everywhere, and his three companions were unlikely to draw any attention or questions for looking out of place. Its capital city, Jiren, with its cheap markets and sideshows, was almost entirely dedicated to the tourist industry. 

"Doctor!" Nyssa exclaimed, as the two women reached him. "Is it done?" 

"Yes, all finished," he confirmed. He looked around, puzzled. Something was missing. "Where's Luthen?" 

"That's something we'd like to know, too," Tegan said darkly. "He ducked out on us, Doctor. Yesterday evening. Just vanished without a word from his room at the hotel. We've been looking for him all day." 

The Doctor frowned. The reason for Tegan's exasperation was all around him; they'd never find a single person in such crowds of alien oddities. Not if he didn't want to be found. 

"He left a note," Nyssa said, holding out a folded piece of paper. 

"It says 'Goodbye, thanks for everything' signed Ryn Luthen," Tegan snapped before the Doctor could open it. "What should we do, Doc?" 

"Nothing." He raised his hands in a pacifying gesture to halt their imminent angry protests. "What can we do? He knows we're here today. If he isn't here it's because he doesn't want to be. We can't force him to come with us. He's made his choice." 

"But he doesn't belong here!" 

"Half Alucah's population doesn't belong here, Tegan. It's a drifter's planet. He knows that. He'll find a life here. A normal life, or as normal a one as he could expect. I think it's what he came with us to do." He looked around one last time, regretfully, half expecting to see Luthen running out of the crowd. But, no. He sighed. "Come along, time to go." He held the door of the TARDIS open and waved Nyssa and Tegan inside. 

"I've come across some interesting facts on my recent travels," he said, as he flicked the lever to close the door. "Do you realise, for example, that Krian mythology includes a deity called Niza. Goddess of healing. And has it occurred to you how similar the name 'Karalian' is to 'Krian'. It could almost be a derivative, couldn't it?" He grinned at their stunned faces, and began to program the TARDIS controls. "I seem to recall something about a visit to Earth, quite a long while ago," he said absently. 

"The Krians are the Karalians?" Tegan asked. 

"We didn't change anything at all," Nyssa said slowly. "We always did this. Things always happened this way, and we simply went through the motions and played out our part. Just like Verani's poison was never really deadly." 

"I don't know," the Doctor admitted. "I don't think we can ever be sure. Ah, well. Earth, here we come." 

Tegan and Nyssa exchanged a doubtful, knowing glance. 

Grinning, the Doctor stepped back from the console as the time rotor kicked into action and the TARDIS left Alucah, and Luthen, and the last of Janovay behind. 

_END_


End file.
